Plot
As a result of General George S. Patton's (George C. Scott) decision to use former Nazis to help reconstruct post-World War II Germany (and publicly defending the practice), General Dwight Eisenhower (Richard Dysart) removes him from that task and reassigns him to supervise "an army of clerks" whose task is to write the official history of the U.S. military involvement in World War II.
Shortly thereafter, on December 9, 1945 (a day before he was to transfer back to the United States), Patton is involved in an automobile accident that seriously injures his spinal column, paralyzing him. As he lies in his hospital bed, he flashes back to earlier pivotal moments in his life, including stories his father told him of his grandfather's service during the American Civil War which inspired him to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, his marriage to his wife Beatrice (Eva Marie Saint), and his championing of the use of tanks in the United States Army.
President Harry S. Truman and other government officials, not wanting Patton to die on German soil, order him transferred to a stateside hospital. Preparations, including a full plaster body cast, are made, but Patton dies of an embolism on December 21, 1945.
Read more about this topic: The Last Days Of Patton
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)