Patton (Jerry Goldsmith)

patton

(1970)

After a lengthy period of production difficulties, 20th Century Fox’s production telling the story of U.S. General George S. Patton (portrayed by George C. Scott) was finally released in April 1970, receiving wide critical acclaim upon its release and now being regarded as a classic. It went on to win a total of seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Scott, who famously became the first actor to refuse to accept an Oscar, and several other categories, with the very unfortunate exception of Best Original Score. Director Franklin J. Schaffner and composer Jerry Goldsmith had previously collaborated on Planet of the Apes, which resulted in one of Goldsmith’s finest and most innovative scores, and the their collaboration would yield several more great scores in the years following Patton.

The score is roughly thirty minutes long, two and a half hours less than the film itself, something that never would happen in a film today, but here it’s just another of the score’s many strengths; it’s placed very carefully in the film, always doing what it needs to do and no more, and never being there when it doesn’t need to be. This isn’t the typical score you’d expect to hear for a war film, but then Patton is no typical war film. With the exception of Goldsmith’s spectacular title theme, easily one of his finest, the majority of the first half of the score consists of music of a quiet and reflective nature. The tension starts to build up with the instrumentation of “No Assignment”, which then leads us into the second half of the score. “Patton March”, another splendid rendition of the score’s title theme serves as the introduction to the more action oriented side of the score, which features the primary march much more prominently, putting it through several variations in such tracks as “Attack” and “The Payoff”. It also closes out the album (and the film) with the great rendition in “End Title”.

The element of the score that is perhaps most extraordinary however, is Goldsmith’s use of echoing trumpet triplets to represent the general’s belief in reincarnation. The echoing effect, which today would be a few minutes work on a synthesizer, was achieved back then by the use of a “Echoplex” (and a session of achieving this effect is included on the 2010 Intrada album), which used tape loops to repeat the three note motif. This idea is perhaps used to the best effect in the scene where the general stands in the middle of a battlefield; the effect of the trumpets as the camera pans across is just incredible.

There have been several releases of Goldsmith’s score for Patton, but the 2010 release by Intrada Records is the only one that truly does it justice. Also available is a release of the score from Film Score Monthly, and a re-recording of the score (conducted by Goldsmith) released by Varèse, and the latter in particular is worth getting hold of in addition to Intrada’s release for improved sound quality. Either way, Patton is not a score any fan of film music should miss out on; it’s a masterpiece, and one of the prime examples of the genius of Jerry Goldsmith.

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Track Listing

Disc 1