George C. Scott Night

Koolhoven & Simons treat us to an evening of spitting bullets with George C. Scott, the actor who made his name with his grisly, lifelike portrayal of the merciless but brilliant General Patton. Main feature Patton (4K), plus trailers and clips. He’s one of that generation of male Hollywood actors known for his ‘true grit’. No lip service to political correctness, no hesitant search for the right gender, but – as they were then known, ‘real men’, blissfully unaware of the term ‘identity construct’, who made their own way through the Dream Factory, sometimes in the permanent company of The Bottle.

These men from Hollywood’s – now tainted – ‘dodo era’ acted mainly in adventure, action, thriller and crime films. Men like Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood and Robert Mitchum. Or, a little earlier, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney and Errol Flynn.

George C. Scott (1927-1999) was undoubtedly one of the above; he was headstrong, adventurous – in his early twenties he signed up for four years in the Marine Corps, serving during the final year of WWII – he drank and, above all, was a highly talented actor.

Turned down an Oscar

Koolhoven & Simons spend an evening looking into the life and work of the man who turned down an Oscar for his most celebrated role (Patton), acted with panache in classics by Shakespeare, Milton and Arthur Miller, and ended his career appearing in B films such as Angus and The Exorcist III. But what is a B film? Scott saw nuance in exploitation and gave depth to the role of demon detective Lieutenant William F. Kinderman with unforgettable lines such as: ”If you'll forgive me, I shall leave this mystical conversation, too much aesthetics always gives me a headache.”

Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner, US 1970, 170’, 4K)

Convinced that he was right at all times, he was a brilliant strategist who loved to bathe in the bright light of his enormous ego: General George S. Patton was distinguished in WWII by his courage, bulldozer mentality and aptitude for modern warfare, in which the element of surprise is crucial. He and his Third Army defeated the Germans in Bretagne within two weeks, leaving him just an hour away from Paris, ahead of his great rival Montgomery.

George C. Scott crept into Patton’s skin so convincingly that the difference between the real and the fiction general evaporated entirely. His speech to the troops is epic, memorable and one hundred percent Patton. The film was awarded seven Oscars (including for co-screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola); Scott refused his – the first person in film history to do so – as the Oscars ceremony was nothing more than an “insulting, barbaric and thoroughly corrupt” event. Patton would no doubt have approved of such strong language.