The Last Days of Patton

The first Patton movie was a classic, but some stupid TV exec had to convince George C. Scott that this sequel was a good idea. Of course you wouldn't expect much from a TV movie, but this... What were they thinking? This depressing slop just seems to drag on and on, until at the end you're almost happy he's finally dead. The last few days of Patton's life would never be fit for an entire movie. The ending of one, maybe, but it should impossible to stretch Patton dying in a bed into feature length. Yet somehow they did, and even longer. My theory is that at the last minute, someone told the writer they wanted a two-parter. That would explain the huge amounts of padding in this film. My advice, stick to the original and forget this one ever existed.

Following World War II and the events depicted in the wildly successful "Patton" (1970), victorious George C. Scott (as George S. Patton) remains in Germany to work on the defeated county's reconstruction. The US general's decision to employ ex-Nazis (and sympathizers) irks superior Richard Dysart (as Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower) and Patton is reassigned to a desk job. Even worse, he is involved in a serious car crash. While Mr. Scott suffers life-threatening injuries, flashbacks continue to reveal events from General Patton's young adulthood (as Ron Berglas). The title strongly hints our hero will very likely not survive...

This belated sequel to "Patton" (1970) appeared as a CBS-TV three-hour (including commercials) epic movie. It was a popular success, but surprisingly garnered only one "Emmy" award (for make-up) and one further nomination. Allyn Ferguson's music lost, but it is one of this story's main strengths. It evokes the 1940s. The more critically acclaimed 1970 film won most of that year's "Oscar" awards. It featured make-up and music that looked and sounded more like 1970 than the 1940s. The soundtrack music was beautifully composed, but Jerry Goldsmith should have added 1940s flavor, as Mr. Ferguson does...

Scott continues to breathe life into the role for which he is most famous. There isn't much excitement left in Patton's life, but Scott and director Delbert Mann manage to move it along well, considering. Both this sequel and the original 1970 "Patton" will seem too long for the average viewer. Along with an improvement in setting, "The Last Days of Patton" boasts superior supporting performances. Most valuable player is Murray Hamilton (as Hobart "Hap" Gay). And, Patton's love-life is well-represented by cheated-on wife Eva Marie Saint (as Beatrice Ayer) and former "Dark Shadows" TV regular Kathryn Leigh Scott (as Jean Gordon).

******* The Last Days of Patton (9/14/86) Delbert Mann ~ George C. Scott, Murray Hamilton, Eva Marie Saint, Kathryn Leigh Scott

I found this movie compelling to watch. Selecting only the final days of its subject's life, it is not really a biopic. There is no plot--the life of any person seldom has a plot. I call it a character study, probably the least spectacular of all dramas. What character studies lack in spectacle, they're supposed to make up for with a fascinating portrait of the subject's personality--like looking at a great oil painting of a famous person--except that it's a motion picture. Having said that, I found this film to be remarkably well done and could have been better were it not budgeted as a TV movie. I think the film's theme (rather than plot) is how a person handles his own impending death. When the subject is General Patton, a first-class soldier and real hero, a man who always wanted to die by the last bullet of the last battle of the last war of his life, and the circumstances of his dying is by a fender-bender that breaks his neck and renders him an invalid for 12 days, a recipe for a real dramatic character study emerges. How a man like Patton handled the absurdity of his transition to death is the human question that permeates the whole movie. It starts off by his return to the States for the first time since November 1942. He has his wife on his arm, and the couple is surrounded by reporters. The reporters demonstrate that, whether pro or con, Patton is a legend and he makes good copy. Beatrice at his side reminds us that he was also a family man--and a good one--a man who compliments his wife publicly. The film is filled with reminiscing flashbacks which shows two things: that Beatrice was a good match for Patton, particularly the scene where she drives the tank prototype, at her husband's request, to demonstrate the ease with which it can be driven before the Army brass; a man who is sorely tempted to see no more point to continue living is tugged one way by memories (thus, acknowledgment) of having lived a good life and tugged another way to put up a cheerful front in facing the absurd, anticlimactic present. Beatrice realizes this in a scene with General "Hap" Gay in a darkened hospital room where she reveals her understanding that her husband has everyone fooled by his charm and bravado--but her husband is slipping and he knows it. The movie shows that Patton's heroism was not an act put on for his soldiers or for the public or the press--nor was it self-delusion--his heroism ran deep--steeped as he was in his knowledge of history, his own ancestry and family, the film shows that the dying, invalid Patton was heroic in another way: he was kind and generous to his doctors and their staff; he tried greatly to spare his wife any unnecessary hurt. Even in his attitudes towards the de-Nazification policy--is not driven by any political motive. No real warrior takes any pleasure in seeing a vanquished people suffer after they've been disarmed. Given his upbringing and values he had demonstrated all his life, I believe that Patton saw his job as military governor of Bavaria to help the Bavarian people survive the winter and to get back on their feet. Even if he were wrong about de-Nazification, the film is interested in the character that drove the man. His attitude towards the Soviets was probably also driven by what he saw as very cruel and heartless conduct by the Soviet forces against the conquered German population. This movie is not for everyone. It will not entertain anyone who needs real spectacle to remain entertained. The natural audience for this kind of movie is a more mature--or emotionally deep--audience.

This film, a made-for-TV sequel to the movie "Patton", is exceptionally well done. With essentially the same cast as the film, it follows the career of General George S. Patton from victory in Europe to his untimely death following an automobile accident in Bavaria. While the movie "Patton" portrays the brusque, sometimes profane side of General Patton, this sequel shows his softer side. He was a brilliant strategist and tactician but also felt deeply the role and demands of the common soldier, with whom he desired to be buried. The script for this film was derived from the book by Ladislav Farrago, author of the excellent biography "Patton". Farrago was a WWII OSS agent who experienced the rigors of war firsthand. At the time he wrote "The last days..." and writing about Patton's painful last days in the hospital, he was himself dying of cancer. His wife and son finished the work. This film is an important footnote to history and should be recorded on DVD.

George C. Scott is excellent as is the rest of the cast in this compelling and very well made film. Most of the other posters seem to have missed the point of the film though. "Patton" 1970 was an epic war film which played on Patton's mythic status and personality extremes. Scott played it with such skill that he made it become more than just a war film and it took on the quality of a Shakespearean tragedy. Sequels in general have a hard time usually because they are lazy and thinly-veiled remakes of the original film they follow. The very few excellent sequels that I have seen take a new direction to the original and explore new territory e.g. French Connection 2. This is probably why "The Last Days of Patton" receives such low ratings - this film is not a war film at all, is not epic in scope or budget(being made for t.v.) and concentrates instead upon Patton's personal friendships, family, his youth and also the softer side to his character that was not really explored in "Patton". The story is quite sensitive and moving - very different to the original but in it's own way just as good. An excellent companion piece that complete's the Patton story.