I watched my Patton Bluray this evening for the seventh or eighth time (I’ve lost count), mainly to savor Fred J. Koenekamp‘s glorious cinematography.

Franklin J. Schaffner‘s Oscar-winning film (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay plus three more) was captured in 65mm Dimension 150, which has a panoramic, large-canvas feeling…acres of head and side room, and no MCUs or close-ups or inserts except at the very beginning, just before the big American flag speech. Plus every shot is crisp, windowpane clear, spit-shined to perfection.

During the slapping-of-Tim Considine scene in Sicily a delicious fantasy came to mind — George C. Scott‘s three-star general somehow straddling the swamps of time and coming face to face with a trio of Millennials or Zoomers from ’23, and listening to their white-male suppressive, enemies-of-free-speech, our-way-or-the-highway theology and views on gender fluidity and hormone injections and occasionally slicing dicks and breasts off, and finally becoming enraged and slapping the shit out of all three with a leather glove….”shut aahhhp!…ya goddam wokesters!!”

Schoenkamp’s cinematography and Jerry Goldsmith‘s legendary score were Oscar-nominated, and both lost. The winners in their respective categories were Freddie Young for Ryan’s Daughter and Francis Lai for Love Story.