"Patton" - The forgotten gem in my collection (1 Viewer)

[Nathan*W]

I had picked up the 2-disc set when I heard it was going out of print. WOW what a good film. George C. Scott rocked! I can totally see why it won 8 Oscars including best picture.

Patton directing trucks and tanks like a traffic cop - priceless.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

See my YMDB top 20.

And that's one nice sig you got there.

 

[Ben Osborne]

Patton is my favorite movie, although I haven't watched the DVD in a while, and I haven't seen the sequel, "The Last Days of Patton." Amazon.com lists that DVD for $3.99. How can that be?

[url=http://24.167.228.56/images/Movie%20Captures/thumbnails/PIC1002patton.jpg] [/url]

 

[ArmandV]

The Last Days of Patton was a tv movie, not a major theatrical production. It wasn't that good a film anyway.

 

[Louis C]

Another great quote from Patton:

"Hell, I wish I had kissed the sonofabitch" - Patton, referring to the soldier he slapped and paid a political price for.


That soundtrack music stays with you days after watching!

 

[Cees Alons]

The Last Days of Patton .... wasn't that good a film anyway.

But a must for the true fan. You simply need both. And George C. Scott is Patton again!

Cees

 

[Eman_Ramos]

Wow how funny...

I just saw this movie yesterday. It was very well done. Some of the battles scenes are just amazing.

 

[RobertR]

Great film. Scott's performance has to rank as one of the very best ever. I saw it at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences theater. Karl Malden was on hand to talk about the film.

 

[Nathan*W]

Karl Malden was on hand to talk about the film.

Do you remember what he had to say?

 

[Joseph Bolus]

I love the movie, but the DVD transfer suffers from some major edge halos.

Sure wish FOX would totally remaster and re-release this movie along with The Sound of Music (another early FOX DVD effort that's plagued with edge halos.)

Great movie, though!

"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."

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

The 2 disk set announced Fox's intention to take DVD seriously. I didn't read any of the early reviews and just blindly pre-ordered it. At the time Fox was not doing well by the DVD format. Imagine my amazement when I opened the cardboard shipping box and found a 2 disk special edition!

Be advised that the speech opening the film has been "cleaned up" for language.

Here's the unexpurgated version:
www.pattonhq.com/speech.html

 

[Dome Vongvises]

During the HTF Revote, I made the point that the speech was cleaned up. I wish they hadn't, and that the film preserved the nature of the speech.

Besides the speech being a hell of a lot better as it originally is, I thought the vulgarity of this speech would serve as a stark contrast to his poetic and warrior romantic sensibilities.

 

[Ben Osborne]

The speech in the movie is fairly vulgar and offensive at it is. When I first saw the movie on HBO, I wasn't planning on watching the whole thing, but after Patton's opening speech I couldn't help but want to know more about the General, even though I thought his speech was insulting. So the scene does its job. It's one of the classic scenes in all of cinema, and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

The changes are justified by artistic license, just as the film-makers were justified in merging the "slapping" incidents, showing only one as opposed to the two incidents that happened in real life. It makes sense cinematically.

 

[DaveBB]

That soundtrack music stays with you days after watching!

Easily one of Jerry Goldsmith's best.

 

[Louis C]

Be advised that the speech opening the film has been "cleaned up" for language.

This does not mean the film was modified by the way. The DVD is the same as the theatrical release.

Dennis, thanks for the link to the original speech. Yes it is MUCH more colorful.:b

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

I should queue up both Patton and Saving Private Ryan, so I can go straight from Patton's speech onto Omaha beach. His speech was originally a 5 June 1944 pep talk for the landings the very next day.

 

[Edwin-S]

What was the name of the movie about the death of Patton? The story, IIRC, was about Patton, allegedly, being assassinated.


Whoops forget it. Should have used IMDb first, before asking the question. It was "BRASS TARGET". If I remember rightly, BT was kind of boring.

 

[Ben Osborne]

I remember hearing that the speech originally was going to appear later in the film -- around the time of the D-Day invasion, right before the General saw combat again -- but was moved to the beginning for artistic reasons. What a great decision. Not that the movie would have been much worse if the speech didn't appear until later, but the movie wouldn't have the classic opening it has now.

 

[Edwin-S]

Why did you find the speech insulting? I thought it fit pretty well with his character. He was pretty straight forward and didn't try to spout patriotic BS. I thought his statement -about making the other guy die for his country- was bald truth.

 

[Ben Osborne]

I have no problem with Patton's statement that "no poor bastard has ever one a war by dying for his country" but by making "the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." Other parts are jingoistic and oversimplifying. At the time I remember Patton's equating wanting to stay out of the war with not being a winner striking me as a particularly misleading fallacy. Things like that coupled with his profanity, references to "the Hun," and what seemed to me as an unhealthy enthusiasm for killing created a negative impression of the man. Now that I've seen the movie many times I'm more sympathetic and the speech doesn't seem too shocking, but I think part of the brilliance of the movie is that you don't have to like the General personally in order to be interested in his life, and, for a while, share his dreams of military conquest.