History Channel documentary on Patton panned
The History Channel’s new ten-part series on George S. Patton—which began, inappropriately enough, on Friday, April 10, just in time for Easter—is an ambitious attempt to recast the age-old formula of the “war documentary” with the methods and computer-generated visual tricks of “war games,” the digitized kind that fascinate and even obsess male teenagers and some adults on computers and PlayStation. Carl Lindahl, of Flight 33 Productions, is to be congratulated for trying to breathe new life into an old format that has gone sticky with time, combat always being indicated by shots of cannons being loaded and fired or bombers dropping bombs, the same old footage being used over and over again.
Unfortunately, the computer-generated images in Patton 360 are rather static and unconvincing, and tend to show the same thing as old war footage. The same lumbering German Tiger tank appears from time to time to signify a German attack (though in fact the Germans had very few Tigers in North Africa), so that it rapidly becomes a cliché; having said that, it’s a much more interesting way of trying to show war than most soporific television documentaries and is clearly the first step to a more interesting and lively way of presenting historical events on television. A round of applause for the producers and the animators of Patton 360, therefore. As Al Jolson said in The Jazz Singer when, for the first time, a human voice was heard in a movie, “You ain’t heard nothing yet, folks!” This is the beginning of a new era in historical documentaries, and a very exciting one.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that all the other faults of historical documentaries are still there—the portentous script and the ponderous reading of it, for example. Since David McCullough has proved that a good script and a good voice can make all the difference in the world, why not use him, or someone who has at least some of his talents? (McCullough’s book John Adams inspired the HBO miniseries, and Seabiscuit and The Civil War enjoy his narration.) But no, this is the usual heavy-handed narration of documentaries, as if the Ken Burns-McCullough collaboration on the Civil War had never been made....
Read entire article at Michael Korda at TheDailyBeast.com
Unfortunately, the computer-generated images in Patton 360 are rather static and unconvincing, and tend to show the same thing as old war footage. The same lumbering German Tiger tank appears from time to time to signify a German attack (though in fact the Germans had very few Tigers in North Africa), so that it rapidly becomes a cliché; having said that, it’s a much more interesting way of trying to show war than most soporific television documentaries and is clearly the first step to a more interesting and lively way of presenting historical events on television. A round of applause for the producers and the animators of Patton 360, therefore. As Al Jolson said in The Jazz Singer when, for the first time, a human voice was heard in a movie, “You ain’t heard nothing yet, folks!” This is the beginning of a new era in historical documentaries, and a very exciting one.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that all the other faults of historical documentaries are still there—the portentous script and the ponderous reading of it, for example. Since David McCullough has proved that a good script and a good voice can make all the difference in the world, why not use him, or someone who has at least some of his talents? (McCullough’s book John Adams inspired the HBO miniseries, and Seabiscuit and The Civil War enjoy his narration.) But no, this is the usual heavy-handed narration of documentaries, as if the Ken Burns-McCullough collaboration on the Civil War had never been made....