Paths of Glory (1957)

Paths of Glory is an American war film first released in 1957, directed by Stanley Kubrick.  The film stars Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready and Wayne Morris.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


By 1916, the war in Europe has arrived at a virtual impasse.  On both sides, the progress made in one year is measured in metres and paid for by tens of thousands of soldiers’ lives.  To safeguard his reputation and advance his career, the French General Broulard needs a decisive military victory.  To that end, he coerces his subordinate, General Mireau into launching an attack on an impregnable German position, the Ant Hill.  Mireau passes the order onto Colonel Dax, who commands the 701st infantry regiment.   Dax is dismayed by the order.  His men are suffering from battle fatigue and he knows that the Ant Hill is too well defended to be taken without massive casualties.  When Mireau threatens to have him relieved, Dax has no choice but to comply.  As expected, the push proves to be an unmitigated disaster.   Most of the soldiers are unable to leave their trenches because the enemy fire is so intense.  Those that do make it into no man’s land are cut down instantly or forced to retreat.  When Mireau’s order for his gunners to open fire on his own troops is disobeyed, the general decides that desperate measures are called for if he is to instil some discipline into his men.  He decrees that one soldier be selected from each of the three companies and be subjected to a court martial, charged with cowardice.  Appalled by this injustice, Dax decides to defend the men at their trial, but soon realises that he has no chance of saving them...

Stanley Kubrick’s first true masterpiece, Paths of Glory offers the most powerful antiwar statement since Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and is a film that seethes with humanist indignation, evoking much the same reaction in its audience.  In common with much of Kubrick’s subsequent work, the film has an obvious anti-authoritarian agenda and rails against the abuse of power by those who merely use their position in society for their own end.  Not for the last time in his career, Kubrick proved to be ahead of his time.  Over the next decade, such loathing and mistrust for authority and the established order would become widespread across most of the western world, having an enormous impact on contemporary cinema.  Kubrick would be in the vanguard of this cultural and political new wave.

The film was as much a personal venture for Kirk Douglas as it was for Kubrick.  Without the actor’s financial support, the film probably would never have been made, and it was Douglas who persuaded the director not to go for the traditional Hollywood happy ending.   The character of Dax, a rugged idealist, appears to have been tailor-made for Douglas and the actor (helped by a  well-crafted screenplay) gives one of his finest performances.

Paths of Glory was immensely controversial when it was first released – not surprising as it was the most high profile overtly anti-war film made since the end of the Second World War.  The French government in particular were not impressed by the film; acting under pressure from the military and war veterans, they discouraged the film’s distributor, United Artists, from releasing the film in France.  The film was not shown in that country until 1975.  Understandably, Kubrick was unable to shoot the film France, and so it was made, ironically, in Germany.

Paths of Glory may not be the most subtle of anti-war films, but it is remarkably effective.  There is not one line that comes out of George Macready’s mouth which doesn’t make you want to pick up a brick and hurl it at the screen in disgust (an expensive indulgence if you have just forked out on a new widescreen plasma TV).  "Yes, I know how to boost morale.  Let’s just round up a few snivelling cowards and have them shot.  Nothing better."   The sad fact is that whilst General Mireau may veer towards caricature he is a fairly accurate representation of a career officer at the time of the First World War – dehumanised to the point that he regards his troops as expendable military equipment, not human beings, and can anticipate an eighty per cent wastage (of human life) in a military manoeuvre without batting an eyelid.  It is hard to know which is more horrific - the industrial-scale slaughter of troops as they embark on an unwinnable assault on an enemy position or the complete disregard for the value of human life shown by the bloodless generals.   

Perhaps none of Kubrick’s films bears the author’s stamp so visibly as this one.  The most individualistic of filmmakers made this a personal crusade against those that seek to crush individuality (the generals we see in the film presumably being a proxy for unsympathetic film producers and distributors who put profit before art).   The film is also a major technical achievement for a young filmmaker, presaging his subsequent work with its inventive camerawork and striking visual design (for which the German cinematographer Georg Krause should take some credit).  Shot in high contrast black and white, often with unsettling camera angles, the film has a stark film noir texture that provides a sense of confinement which grows as Dax’s attempts to save his men from a firing squad proves increasingly futile.  

Note also the difference in style between the way in which the ordinary men on the battlefield and the officers in their opulent surroundings are shot.  The camera movements and lighting in the château scenes have an elegance and artificiality that contrasts with the more realist approach adopted for the sequences set in the trenches and no man’s land.  The film shows us two completely different worlds - one of privilege that is mired in decadence and hypocrisy, the other of unspeakable horror that is composed of mud, blood and fear. 

Whilst Dax may fail to bridge the gulf between these two worlds he does offer us a glimmer of hope that one day humanity and compassion will triumph over tyranny and ignorance.  It can be argued that the one tangible victory of the First World War was that it hastened the demise of a rotten class system and brought a healthier shade of democracy and social equality to the continent of Europe.  It’s a pity that it took another global conflict to complete the job.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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