Patton advances a highly original thesis: the villain of World War II was not Germany, but Britain. The movie's hero, General George S. Patton (George C. Scott), is distantly analyzed by little Goethes in Nazi uniforms. They pronounce him "a magnificent anachronism" and America's most fearsome belligerent. The British, on the other hand, are all whining limeys whose vindictive leader, Field Marshal Montgomery, nourishes his ego on the bones of American troops. One can imagine an equally distorted British interpretation mounting Monty as a knight-errant and Patton as a gorilla.
Patton opens with the general's famous exhortation to the troops: "I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." Brimming with messianic zeal, the movie general struts about North Africa as if he imagined himself a Carthaginian commander. And that is precisely what the real Patton thought he was. A mirror-gazing mystic, Patton believed in reincarnation and wrote odes to himself in his other lives. Today such attitudes in a draftee might bar him from service; yesterday they served to propel a general to victories.
Obliging Windmill. Director Franklin Schaffner's previous epic was Planet of the Apes. Patton sometimes seems a postscript, with wide-ranging battle scenes of tanks and air strikes that once again ravage the planet. The script presents Patton as a distorted Quixote, espousing an ancient creed: Hate thine enemy, and never let the home team down. In the end, what truly overtakes Patton is Patton. In a field hospital, the general strikes a battle-fatigued G.I. The shock waves of the slap reverberate back to America, where Congressmen shrill for the general's command. Patton is relieved, and later placed under the authority of his onetime subordinate, Omar N. Bradley, played by Karl Maiden as if he were impersonating a potato.
The actual exploits of Patton in Europe are too outlandish to be fiction. He did indeed liberate 12,000 towns; he did indeed have mules shot when they got in his way. There is no ironist like history; but the film makers will not let hell enough alone. After dodging bullets for three years, Patton was maimed in a peacetime automobile accident. The steel soldier died paralyzed from the neck down. But Patton leaves the general alive, walking across a wide field, wistful and quixotic. A windmill obligingly wheels in the foreground, lest the audience miss the intent.
Public Character. Patton views itself as "a salute to a rebel." The line encapsulates the film's faults. Patton was starved for the superpatriotic rations of the 19th century. It was not necessarily an ignoble hunger, but one can no more rebel backward than one can fall up. The movie's vision blurs the man and, incidentally, the just war around him.