Paths of Glory
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Movie Reviews of Paths of Glory
Movie Review: Friendly fire
Summary: 5 Stars
Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" is the best war movie -- or, rather, the best anti-war movie -- ever made, and that includes "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Grand Illusion". Based on a novel by Humphey Cobb (which in turn was based on a real event), the story follows the fates of three French soldiers accused of cowardice in 1916. "Paths of Glory" was not exactly a box office smash when it was released in 1957; and evidently it completely puzzled the Academy -- though, strangely enough, an anti-war epic, "The Bridge on the River Kwai", was chosen 1957's Best Picture, but that fine film was in color and wide-screen. (I knew an ex-Marine who was horrified by "Paths of Glory", though he basked in the CinemaScope sentimentality of 1955's "Battle Cry".) Directed by Kubrick when he was only 28 from a screenplay written by himself, Jim Thompson, and the shamefully under-rated novelist Calder Willingham, the film's plot hinges on its first scene, a meeting between two French generals, expertly played by Adolphe Menjou and George Macready, the latter's facial scar emphasized by overhead lighting. Menjou has come to Macready to discuss the absolute importance of Macready's men capturing a strategic (and impregnable) German outpost -- mentioning, en passant, that Macready is up for a promotion, provided. Macready's character is one of those paragons of impatience who speaks of troops as though they were matériel. During the harrowing and unsuccessful attack on the enemy's bastion, he is so infuriated by the lack of advance he commands his battery to turn their guns on their own men, an astonishing order that plays an important part in the plot's outcome. Menjou's character is more mysterious: it's difficult to tell if he tempting people or testing them. The star of the movie is Kirk Douglas as the humane Colonel Dax, commander of the regiment ordered to take the "ant hill". It's a strong performance of restrained idealism; only near the end is Douglas allowed one of the big outbursts for which he was noted. It is he who must act as defense lawyer when Macready insists that three men of the Colonel's regiment -- one man from each battalion -- be placed before court martial, charged with cowardice in the face of the enemy. The three actors Ralph Meeker, Timothy Carey, and Joseph Turkel are excellent, playing three very different soldiers, all of them facing a French firing squad. The supporting cast includes Wayne Morris, who played College Joe types in the Thirties, giving a subtle portrayal of a weak alcoholic, and Richard Anderson, Mr Nice Guy at Metro, thoroughly unlikeable here as the court martial's prosecutor. "Paths of Glory" was photographed by George Krause with an eye for the atmosphere of the Great War; the only thing lacking is sepia. There's an exciting cut in the film's second half. Colonel Dax is in his quarters, tired and depressed, when a battery commander enters, saying he has information which may have a bearing on the court martial. Dax immediately perks up and says "Come in". Then the camera cuts, not to the commander but to a smiling, somewhat oily retainer crossing a ballroom floor to the strains of "The Emperor Waltz". It's a stunning depiction of the contrast between trench life and the luxury in the upper ranks on the Western Front. Nothing about "Paths of Glory" presents war as anything like la gloire idealized by the French, and the mood of the entire movie, including the climatic scene, is summed up in the title, when one realizes it is taken from a poem by Thomas Gray: "The paths of glory lead but to the grave".Movie Review: This is the one.
Summary: 5 Stars
Is this Stanley Kubrick's best film? Absolutely.This director has some good and some bad films. He also has some very poor ones and some really great ones. He is overrated as a whole, but if you can find his better films then they certainly do stand out among the rest for their respective genres. Here he is the Lord of filmmakers. There is no question that this film has everything that makes the director's status as the cream of the crop.
This film was made in 1957, but just might as well have been made in 2004. The acting mostly resembles that cliché 1950s type acting where the actors are somewhat aware of the camera but that does not matter and after ten minutes this common acting production problem is certainly consumed by the weight of the plot, technical direction and the outstanding performances of all concerned. When the camera does those long and timeless tracking shots down the trenches you can only be mesmerized by the sheer boldness of its originality and massive undertaking.
This is the film that launched Kubrick's career and put him on the Path of Grandeur. This is akin to saying that it is Stephen Speilberg's Jaws, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, James Cameron's The Terminator or Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. It defined the director and is THAT important on his list of films that you should see. Sadly this film by Kubrick has been eclipsed by "Spartacus" because it was made three years before that film with the exact same star. Unfortunately this means that whenever we hear the words "Kubrick" and "Douglas" together we think of Rome and Gladiators. In truth we should be thinking France and World War I.
Based on the book by Humphrey Cobb this is part war film / part military courtroom drama. It is about the wastes of war as a somewhat young lawyer (Douglas) plays the French Colonel Dax who is on the Western Front with his army. Most of the very realistic war scenes take place in the trenches and some on the battle field. Colonel Dax is ordered to capture the German enemy who are awaiting them on the other side with more firepower than they can handle. Under intense and often stupid political orders Colonel Dax is in a crises of his command. On one hand he must show his strength as a leader to his seniors and on the other he must defend his troops from the exploitation of absolute corrupt bureaucracy. This same theme was played out in the more recent movie "The Thin Red Line". The later part of this film is about soldiers who are made whipping boys for the legion's failures and losses. The Colonel, as a lawyer (and their battlefield leader), acts as representation for these men. The film poses many questions and answers important issue that are very relevant for our time.
*As a note Kubrick's wife, up until his death, is the woman singing at the end of this film. The film was also banned in France for its portrayal of the French army.*
This is simply one of the best war dramas you will ever likely see, not to mention one of the best courtroom dramas too. Both worlds melt perfectly together as one in this great, provocative, cerebral and touching motion picture film. Vote no one into government who has not seen this film, period. It should be mandatory viewing for all political science professionals and is certainly the most important dissertation about conflict since Sun-Tzu's "The Art of War".
This is Unquestionably, Most Excellent Cinema.
Movie Review: Kubrick's Searing Indictment of Military Politics Still Startles and Resonates
Summary: 5 Stars
There have been many exceptional anti-war films throughout the years - Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front, Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima - but I doubt if there's been one as emotionally devastating and economically dramatized as Stanley Kubrick's searing 1957 classic indictment of military politics among the upper ranks of the French army during WWI. Running a scant 86 minutes, the movie wastes no time in showing the exploitation of military ranks by the French General Staff to participate in a suicide mission on the western front. The objective is to take over "Ant Hill", a German stronghold of no strategic importance to the French except to the ambitious General Mireau, who is given the incentive of a promotion if the attack is successful. It's oblivious from the outset that the chances of success are practically nil since the men in the trenches are battered and weak from a number of successful advancements into enemy territory. The conscientious Colonel Dax is handed the responsibility of leading the men, but it turns completely fatal due initially to the blunder of one commanding officer's orders and the dominant German forces. Desperate to avoid humiliation, Mireau transfers blame for the failure to the soldiers and accuses them of cowardice.
If Mireau had his way, one hundred men would have been publicly executed, but he is ordered to identify three men to be to be executed exemplarily to satisfy the blood thirst of the military command. Dax defends the three men at the court-martial hearing but appears doomed to failure by a kangaroo court. The rest of the story plays out in aching detail until the shattering conclusion. Although he is more famous for his larger-than-life portrayals like Vincent Van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life and the title role in Kubrick's later Spartacus, Kirk Douglas is no less mesmerizing in a comparatively subdued performance as Dax. In hindsight, it seems rather punitive that he never won a competitive Oscar. In a particularly poignant performance, Ralph Meeker, an even more undervalued actor most famous for Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, plays Corporal Paris, one of the three chosen to die specifically because his commanding officer wants to be rid of the only eyewitness to his act of drunken cowardice. With his distinctive facial scar, George Macready plays the fanatical Mireau with uncompromising fury, while Adolphe Menjou, in one of the last roles of a long career, plays the blatantly immoral General Broulard with a slyly sinister panache. It's no wonder the film was banned in France for nearly two decades. The 1999 DVD offers only the original theatrical trailer as an extra. Well beyond Kubrick aficionados, this remains essential viewing for anyone interested in classic cinema.
Movie Review: Indictment of War...Affirmation of Humanity
Summary: 5 Stars
It has been almost 50 years since this anti-war film appeared, one which was banned in France until 1970. It is based on Humphrey Cobb's novel. Directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas who also produced it, the film examines a fictional (but nonetheless wholly believable) situation during World War One when French troops are ordered to achieve an impossible military objective: Climb and secure the "Ant Hill," a heavily-fortified German position. Of course the troops are decimated. Whom to blame? General Broulard (Adolph Menjou) who gave the order? The troops' general, General Mireau (George MacReady), whose career ambitions overcame his doubts about the order? The officer (Colonel Dax) who led the attack? General Broulard gives a second order: Select three of the survivors, charge them with cowardice, give them a perfunctory military trial, and then execute them. Their commanding officer is Colonel Dax (Douglas) who had been an attorney in civilian life. He is ordered to be the defense counsel. After the inevitable verdict, the three representatives are executed by a firing squad.
Kubrick presents all this on film as if it were a documentary of actual events. Appropriately, he filmed it in black-and-white, in part to dramatize the obvious juxtapositions of right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice, etc. The battlefield carnage is extensive but not gratuitous. For me, the insensitivity, indeed inhumanity of the two generals -- far removed from combat in luxurious comfort -- is far more upsetting than the assault on the "Ant Hill." The men who followed orders and lost their lives or their limbs may have died in vain but at least died with honor, if not glory. Kubrick leaves absolutely no doubt about the generals who sent them into battle. Colonel Dax understands the need for military discipline. Orders must be followed. He eventually realizes that no matter how logical and eloquent his defense, the three men are doomed as were so many of their comrades were while climbing the "Ant Hill." Dax also realizes Broulard and Mireau will never be held accountable for the order nor for denying any responsibility for its tragic consequences. Dante reserved the worst ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserved their neutrality. Kubrick ensures that Menju and MacReady portray Broulard and Mireau not as neutral accomplices but as agents of evil: a more dangerous adversary than the one their troops face in battle.
With regard to Dax, he did everything he could to save the three men. He leaves absolutely no doubt in the minds of Generals Broulard and Mireau what he thinks of them, both as officers and as human beings. However, they are his military superiors and the war continues after the executions. I mention all this by way of suggesting a context for my opinion that the final scene in the cafe has a very important purpose: to communicate Kubrick's reassurance to those who see his film that even amidst war's death and mutilation, the very best of human instincts somehow prevail. They cannot be defeated by the "Ant Hill," nor by Broulard and Mireau and their obscene abuse of military justice. In my opinion, that is what Dax realizes in the cafe as he and other soldiers listen to a terrified girl sing. And that is the final "message" which Kubrick seems determined to leave with his audience.
Movie Review: Anti-injustice, anti-authoritarian
Summary: 5 Stars
When you are the one who gets to decide who lives and who dies, what are the criteria that the rest of us should buy into before giving our consent? If a general, or a CEO for that matter, asks the impossible, how far must men go in following their orders before disobedience is permissible? When is it ok for a cog in the machine to stop being a machine and start being a human being? This film suggests that the Ant Hill could only have been taken by live soldiers, and if all the soldiers were being slaughtered in the attempt to cross no mans land, the few survivors should naturally turn back, and live to fight another day. Under these circumstances, taking the Hill would have been impossible.
Ah, but that was an embarrasment for the general who ordered the attack. His judgement could not have been wrong, so, therefore, the men must be cowards. The role of Reason, the nature of absurdity, courage, and cowardice are all examined in this simple story, and the implication is clear that it is better to die bravely in front of a firing squad than to grow comfortable with mendacity and cower before the truth. The real cowards in the story were those who ordered these men to their deaths on the battlefield, because they were afraid to say no and risk their reputations for daring, and also those who ordered their deaths in front of a firing squad, and also those who concealed the truth out of fear of the consequences. Again, it is better to die bravely than live in cowardice. And the bravest of them all was the colonel played by Kirk Douglas, who fought for reason, justice, truth, and against the enemy on every side, even when the enemy was his superior officer. Yes, the enemy can be found in your own ranks, even among your commanding officers.
In the end they are all ordered back to the front. However, the next to the last scene in the cafe, is one of the most astonishing moments in cinematic history.
The soldiers, young and old, are making sport of a pretty young German girl who is being put forward by the proprietor for their entertainment. She has no talent, save for a little 'natural talent' he says, gesturing along the length of her body. "She cannot dance, she cannot tell jokes, but she has a golden throat, she sings like a bird", he tells them. They are laughing and taunting her, and she is nervous and intimidated, and begins to sing, haltingly, but plaintively, and one by one, the men grow silent. The camera moves from face to face, young, old, battle weary, her voice reminds them of all that is delicate and sweet, all that is not brutal and meaningless and horrible. And they all can remember a time, long ago, when they were not fighting and killing and struggling to keep alive, and slowly, one by one, they begin wiping away the tears, then picking up her melody and gradually joining in. Kirk Douglas peers in through the window when the sargeant comes up with their orders to return to the front. "Give them a few more minutes," he says, and turns heel. It is a devastating moment. This is a film with a clear and powerful message. But it is not an anti-war movie. It is anti-mendacity, anti-authoritarian, and anti-injustice. The war setting is just a timless trope to carry the weight of these more significant issues.