One of the Greatest Opening Scenes in History is 5 Minutes of One Man Yelling at You

I’ll be honest with you, I came to Patton late. I was in film school, buried in Godard and Cassavetes, doing everything I could to seem like I was too cool for a three-hour war epic.

Then I had an afternoon alone, and I remember it was on TCM. I was just going to watch the opening scene, and suddenly it was much later, and the credits rolled.

I couldn't turn away from the screen because Patton doesn’t ease you in. It doesn’t warm up. It walks out in front of the biggest American flag you’ve ever seen in your life, and gives you a character you want to run into battle with, one you'd die for.

This movie was on AFI's top 100 list, and I really do love it.

Let's dive in.

What You Should Know About Patton

This movie is a biopic of World War II hero General George S. Patton, who was quite the controversial figure in his day.

The movie follows his wartime activities and accomplishments over the course of WWII. We begin in the North African campaign and end with his removal from command after his outspoken criticism of the US post-war military strategy.

The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards at the 1971 ceremony, winning seven awards (including Best Picture).

• Director : Franklin J. Schaffner
• Writers : Francis Ford Coppola, Edmund H. North
• Cinematographer : Fred Koenekamp
• Cast: George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Ed Binns, Michael Strong
• AFI Rank: #89 — 100 Years...100 Movies

The Speech That Broke the Rules of Cinema

George Patton was a really complicated guy in history. He was a genius but also reckless, weird, and magnetic. He has so much charisma and gravity.

So, how do you sell that from the opening frame?

You need to hook the audience and teach them really quickly all these things about the protagonist of the movie.

To do that, the film opens on a man. Standing in front of a flag. Just...talking.

That’s it. That’s the whole opening. No action, no montage, no voice-over setup, no context. Just George C. Scott in full military dress, walking to a podium in front of an American flag so massive it dwarfs him and then, for roughly five minutes, commanding your complete and total attention.

In that moment, he's a general and we're his army.

This truly only works because George C. Scott is one of the greatest actors who ever lived, and in this movie, he kind of becomes Patton in a real way.

From that moment onward, we're under Patton's command, and the story can take us anywhere because we'll march with him.

The Performance That Refused an Oscar

It's so crazy to think about now, where actors are all about awards, and I think the Academy has become a selling point for contracts, and George C. Scott saw all that coming.

He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for this performance in 1971, and he refused it. He called the Oscars a “meat parade” and said he wanted nothing to do with it.

Well, the Academy sent him the Oscar anyway. He reportedly used it as a doorstop.

But here’s what gets me about Scott’s work in this film: he fills the frame in every scene. You can feel all the actors and sets pulling into him. He's larger than that flag at the start, and his work helps us defeat the enemy because he can command the hearts and minds of everyone around him.

And there are also these quiet, self-reflective moments where we dig into Patton as a person, what Scott shows vulnerability and love and fear and anger that just makes this character feel whole.

As a writer, I’m always chasing scenes where the subtext is doing more work than the actual scene needs to do. And this movie has that in spades, thanks to its epic writers.

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What Francis Ford Coppola Got Right

Patton was written by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, who won Oscars for this script. You may think this is just a propaganda film, but it's not.

I thought it was until I finally watched it, but it's a really nuanced take on a man's life that deconstructs how he feels about a country. It's a perspective that doesn’t lionize him, and it doesn’t tear him down. It just puts him in front of you, fully formed and deeply contradictory, and lets you figure it out.

The opening speech is pulled directly from a real speech Patton gave to his troops. Coppola and North punched it up, but the bones are real. And it gave us this powerful opening that gets us ready for whatever happens next.

The Director Knew What He Was Doing

It's so weird to think about, but director Franklin J. Schaffner had just come off Planet of the Apes to make this movie, which is a career pivot you don’t see coming.

There is this crazy thematic link between both movies, breaking down what it means to be humans and to battle with institutions and not one another.

Each movie is about power and how to wield it.

Schaffner’s biggest directorial choice in that opening is that we don’t cut. He let Scott breathe and be. He didn't make the camera the hero; he let the actor do all the work.

That kind of restraint is incredibly hard to pull off, especially for over five minutes.

Why This Movie Still Matters

AFI ranked Patton at #89 on their list of the 100 greatest American films. I’ve gone back and forth on whether that’s fair. On one hand, almost every movie above it on that list is legitimately great.

On the other hand, I can’t think of another film where the central performance is so total, so consuming, that I wish people talked about this movie a lot more. It really is this brilliant compilation of everyone doing their jobs at an extremely high level.

It's a movie about how if we all work together and do our best, we can accomplish incredible things, like liberating the world from fascism. But also, it shows the dangers of how absolute power can be twisted or turned when our governments fail us or fail to listen to the people.

Summing It All Up

If you haven’t seen Patton, go watch it. If you have seen it, you probably already know exactly what I mean. And if you’ve seen it, but it’s been a while, go back. The speech still lands the same way it did the first time.

Let me know what you think in the comments.