: (Jerry Goldsmith) After decades of
production difficulties, 20th Century Fox finally told in 1970 one of
the most successful character studies from any war. Famous for George C.
Scott's painstakingly realistic portrayal of the title character,
enjoyed resounding critical praise and has since been
elevated to the designation of a classic. The complexities of U.S.
General George Patton were examined both thoroughly and without bias,
glorifying the pompous nature of the man and his many triumphs on the
battlefield while also exploring his strangely romantic religious side
and exposing his vulgar, obsessive, and mean-spirited tendencies. Few
men could justify a three-hour film dedicated to only a brief portion of
their lives, though
is successfully absorbing in all of
its parts, especially when considering the wide variety of locations in
which the film had to show massive military movements. The advance of
his American tanks and troops is followed from North Africa all the way
through Europe, with lengthy pauses to contemplate the role of
reincarnation in life and supply some Scott's best career-delivered
one-liners. The film won Academy Awards for nearly all of its major
players, with composer Jerry Goldsmith being an unfortunate exception.
After collaborating with director Franklin Schaffner for the highly
praised
two years prior (a partnership and
close friendship that would eventually yield several more great scores
over the next two decades), Goldsmith would luckily wiggle out of his
commitment to score the sequel of that film in order to tackle
. Goldsmith had written many scores for World War II topics
already in his short mainstream career, but none would prove as
memorable in any part as the march from
, a concert hall
staple for the composer throughout his career. Despite the dominance of
this theme and the fact that only thirty minutes or so of music was
employed in such a long picture, the effect of his score on the film is
far more complicated than many people may realize. While the famous
march, with all its bravado from brass, flutes, and snare, easily
represents the identity of the character and war, Goldsmith's work for
the film actually spends more time dwelling on the deeper meanings of
life that the general himself explored.
The pompous main theme for
Patton is only applied
sparingly to represent the massive, victorious ego of the general while
subtle, secondary ideas often slowing the pace of the score to a crawl.
That march opens the film, occupies the "Enr'acte" in the middle, and is
featured prominently in the later battle sequence in which Patton's
relentless movements are successfully waged. Film enthusiasts will
likely grasp onto the triplet techniques on trumpets as their favorite
aspect of the score. Serving on the surface as a call to war, these
triplets were run through what was called an "echoplex" box, a tool that
essentially contained tape loops that took the three-note motif and
repeated it in a way that later synthesizers could eventually accomplish
with ease. The sound was so creative for the time that it became a
catchy target for parody as well, heard frequently as a call to arms in
Goldsmith's own, largely obscure comedy classic
The 'Burbs in
1988. By echoing these trumpets, Goldsmith more specifically addressed
the concept of reincarnation, the central theme in Patton's personal
interests. Also of use is a distantly mixed organ, representing the
general's deeply rooted religious beliefs. A significant amount of
relatively uninteresting underscore exists in
Patton, causing
most of the cues in the first half of the film to meander at minimal and
somewhat intimate levels. Light timpani and woodwind expressions of the
score's themes sometimes devolve into lengthy periods of near silence.
Leading this material is a contemplative theme of restrained nobility
that is touched upon in "No Assignment," "The Hospital," and "End
Title;" film score collectors will find interesting connections between
the progressions of this idea and one presented by John Williams for a
similarly religious purpose in
Indiana Jones and the Last
Crusade. Only in the second half of
Patton do the famous
portions really come to light, with snare-driven marches abounding. In
these scenes, Goldsmith also explores a subtheme for the German army
that is briefly treated in "German Advance" but was largely cut from the
finished film. The composer did arrange a standalone concert arrangement
of this march that was recorded later for the
Patton album.
Dedicated Goldsmith enthusiasts will notice an interesting similarity
between the rhythmic performances here and those in the composer's
1980's and 1990's works. In particular, "Winter March" is an intriguing
foreshadowing of
Small Soldiers late in Goldsmith's career.
For forty years,
Patton never received the best
of treatment on album. Three full recordings were conducted by Goldsmith
throughout his lifetime, and for a long time, only two of them had been
released in digital format. He recorded the score twice during the
film's initial run; as was customary at the time, an album version
featuring more palatable arrangements and harmonious tones was recorded
separately from the film version. This London recording for the LP
record was easily more listenable than the comparatively sparse film
version, though it never made it onto CD before Goldsmith's death in
2004. To help rectify this situation, Goldsmith re-recorded the score
again in 1997 as part of the Varèse Sarabande label's series of
albums featuring the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. With a vibrant
and crisp quality to the updated recording, as well as Goldsmith's own
conducting of that performance, the 1997 version (reviewed separately at
Filmtracks) has always been a superior alternative to any of the
offerings of the prior recordings. It also features a great performance
of Goldsmith's lesser known but equally effective music for
Tora!
Tora! Tora! as well. Die-hard
Patton enthusiasts have
exclaimed, though, that hearing the famous trumpet triplets of the score
performed acoustically rather than through the echoplex on that 1997
re-recording is wholly unsatisfying, an opinion considered rubbish by
those not bothered by the minute differences between the techniques. By
then, the film recording of
Patton had been released a couple of
times on CD, but not in convincing fashion. In 1992, the Tsunami label
of Germany released the score alongside
A Patch of Blue.
Generally considered a bootleg, this label's sound quality was always
suspect on its products, and their version of
Patton was no
exception. In its favor, the album did feature much of the opening
dialogue to the film, including Scott's spirited performance of the
famous opening speech ("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."). In 1999, Film Score Monthly released the film version of the
score with Frank DeVol 's exciting
The Flight of the Phoenix on
an album widely considered at the time to be the best entry in the
label's young Silver Age Classics series to date. That album improved
the sound quality of the film recording, taking the audio from the same
sources used for Fox's 1997 laserdisc issue of
Patton to provide
a complete and ordered presentation of the music.
It should be mentioned that the Film Score Monthly
album, while making the majority of its waves for treating the
Patton score with respect, is more often cited as a success in
retrospect because of the presence of
The Flight of the Phoenix
on the same product. With 40 minutes of the underappreciated and diverse
DeVol score finally made available, the FSM album was a great success
overall, beautifully produced for the time and setting the standard for
all labels' limited expansions for years to come while essentially
hitting two birds with one stone. Veteran collectors flocked to the
limited edition item mostly because of the DeVol work, though, for the
Varèse album from a few years earlier had provided such a
resounding rendition of
Patton that the necessity for the
original film version was diminished. It sold out and became a hot
collectible before long, representing the only CD presentation of
The
Flight of the Phoenix until Intrada Records nicely expanded it in
2021. True enthusiasts were still holding on to the original 1970 LP
recording of
Patton from London, however, and, for these folks,
Intrada thankfully alleviated their pain in 2010. Their 2-CD set finally
provided everything available from the two 1970 recordings on one
comprehensive
Patton product, not only offering superior
treatment of the music but doing so on an commercial pressing of
unlimited numbers that relegated the 1999 album to usefulness for only
enthusiasts of
The Flight of the Phoenix. The first CD of
Intrada's set contains the same contents of the FSM product but pads
that music with the addition of two bonus tracks: the solo bugle salute
and a raw echoplex recording session. The quality of sound here is not
noticeably improved, though it will seem expectedly hollow compared to
the second CD in the set, which is where the goldmine lies. The full LP
recording has been cleaned up and sounds great, the "End Title" included
in stereo and without Scott's dialogue. Those who love the dialogue,
however, will be pleased by the addition of the mono/speech version of
"End Title" and the famous "Patton Speech" at the start. All around,
Intrada finally gave
Patton the treatment it deserved, and as a
regular retail album, it was accessible to all. Still, some collectors
will continue to pursue the FSM version for
The Flight of the
Phoenix and the resounding re-recording of
Patton from
Varèse, the latter a great companion to Intrada's set. As for the
hapless 1992 Tsunami album, don't hesitate to melt it down and use it to
grease the treads of your tanks.
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- Music as Written for the Film: *****
- Music as Heard on the 1992 Tsunami Album: **
- Music as Heard on the 1997 Varèse Sarabande Re-Recording: *****
- Music as Heard on the 1999 Film Score Monthly Album: ****
- Music as Heard on the 2010 Intrada Set: *****
- Overall: *****
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 128 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.28
(in 153,786 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
