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Francis Ford Coppola provides the strangest commentary I have ever heard during the film. He wrote the original script which was then held up for a number of years. When director Franklin Schaffner came on board he hired writer Edmund H. North to revise and flesh out the original script. Both Coppola and North got story and screenplay credit, but Coppola had nothing to do with the actual film making. There is a long explanation at the beginning about how unusual and unpopular the opening speech was (Patton in front of the enormous flag before the credits) but hen there are long periods of non commentary punctuated by mis-rememberings and guesses and apologies for not being there, etc. Coppola did a tremendous amount of research and he constanly reminds us how accurate the lines and incidents are. I did learn a few things along the way.The film, BTW, is still wonderful, more so in this first time ever anamorphic transfer. Director Schaffner made good use of the widescreen Dimension 150 film process. And Gerry Goldsmith's score is evocative of the "I have been here before" theme of the film.
Follow Ups:
What a truly great performance by Scott as the talented warloving general. He inhabits his role and is utterly convincing, larger than life.
I feel he repeated this Patton persona time after time in following roles- making him a tiresome actor to watch in later years.In the early years - His comedy pratfalls and timing in "Dr Strangelove" almost upstage Sellers. Also noteworthy is his character in "The Hustler". Just wonderfully dark and complex ... "You owe me MONEY!"
inventiveness just the same over the top bluster. Patton was far more complex and, yes, cultured, than Scott's portrayal. All this movie did was perpetuate what everyone always had been told about Patton.
Boring.
I felt that the film and Coppola's screenplay went out of its way to portray the complexity of the man and his motivation. I hardly think this film is "boring".
There's something wrong about Scott as Patton, and it's age.Scott was 42, Patton - by the end of the war - was 60, and his photographs look much older. Physically, he was ageing quickly - and in the film, Scott in 1945 looks as fresh as in 1943... no complexity here.
He also gave an outstanding performance in Paul Schrader's "Hardcore", about a man searching for his teenage daughter who had run away and was making porno films.When Peter Boyle shows him the porno film of his daughter, Scott is like a volcano about to erupt.
besides the previously mentioned Hardcore and Patton I always loved him in "The Flim Flam Man".
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