A classic

Even though this movie is now more than 40 years old, it still has a pretty damned good reputation and I was really eager to check it out. Eventually, I wasn’t disappointed and it definitely deserved to win the Best Picture Academy award at the time. Indeed, it is quite a fascinating war feature with a fascinating real figure in the middle. It seemed that Patton was quite a character but you can’t deny that he was a great military strategist and the masterstroke in this movie was to make a multi-layered portrait of this ultimate soldier. Obviously, George C. Scott (who also won the Academy award but refused it because he was against the idea of a competition between actors) was quite brilliant and this performance would be the one he will be forever remembered. The funny thing is that he didn’t believe that he actually did a good job and would, apparently, apologize often to the director Franklin J. Schaffner because he didn’t deliver the goods. Francis Ford Coppola, who was even younger than I am today, was also involved in this classic and would even win his first Academy award as a writer. To conclude, it is classic, a very good war feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

8/10