Two styles of war film combined

Rating: 7/10 (1 December 2015)

Version I saw: UK DVD release
Actors: 7/10
Plot/script: 7/10
Photography/visual style: 6/10
Music/score: 7/10
Overall: 7/10
I've never seen a bad film from the year 1970, and the Oscar winner that year was Patton, so I felt sure I would like it. Patton is a portrait of the famous American World War II general of the same name, played by George C Scott.
It's a magnetic, compelling performance, from the tub-thumping opening speech through to the end, and it's a shame it did not make more of a star of Scott. I suppose the right role came along at just the right time.
Patton comes at an odd time in the history of war films, which is encapsulated by the two screenwriters. On is Edmund H North, a veteran of the days when war films like his Sink the Bismarck! aimed first and foremost to be historical chronicles. However, the other writer is Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary director whose Apocalypse Now later transformed the genre into one that focused on a message or allegory ahead of dispassionate factual accuracy.
Patton has a bit of both. The film is pretty literal, with no flights of fantasy, and also draws on a theme from Sink the Bismarck! that the Germans lost partly due to Nazi Party internal politics. However, it is also much more a film about one man than about the war, and if anything draws a comparison between its hero's war conduct and America as a whole in international diplomacy.
The production is notably lavish, with huge sets heavily dressed with well observed period trappings, and masses of extras in many scenes. Whole battles are portrayed, always a challenge for any director, although while impressively staged, they left me rather cold.
I did not know that much about General Patton, and for that reason I found the film quite frustrating. I was interested to know more, but because it focuses more on the individual than his place within the whole, I came away with more questions than answers. For those, I suppose I will have to watch more of those old 1950s historically accurate movies.