PATHS OF GLORY Movie Review
1957 Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick's fourth feature is an anti-war masterpiece. It's a brilliant, flawed work that established his reputation as one of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers. Though the script came from an unlikely collaboration of writers—Jim Thompson, master of lurid pulp tales, and “serious” novelist Calder Willingham working from Humphrey Cobb's novel—the film's lapses highlight the flaws that would plague Kubrick's work in the following decades. The same could be said of the strengths: inspired casting, energetic pace, innovative camerawork, uncompromising attitude.
The fact-based plot was so offensive to French authorities that the film has actually been banned there. The setting is 1916, when two years of trench warfare have arrived at a stalemate where nothing of importance has been gained at the cost of thousands of lives. The lines are frozen. Gen. Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) dangles the promise of a promotion before Gen. Mireau (George Macready) if his exhausted 701st Regiment will attempt a suicidal assault on a German position called “The Anthill” and take it. Gen. Mireau orders Col. Dax (Kirk Douglas) to lead the charge. Col. Dax orders Lt. Roget (Wayne Morris) on night reconnaissance mission which is a partial disaster, and then Dax leads the charge himself.
Those scenes are some of the most immediate and harrowing depictions of the Great War ever put on film. Kubrick sets up the attack with a series of long dolly shots inside the trenches. Then when the action moves up to the surface, he follows the men at a slow pace as they make their way across the muddy, cratered landscape amid bullets and exploding shells. It's an intricate, intimate dance between the tracking camera and its subjects. After the attack fails, the commanding officers decide that an example must be made, and three soldiers are chosen at random to be court-martialed for cowardice. Col. Dax finds himself defending Cpl. Paris (Ralph Meeker), Pvt. Ferol (Timothy Carey), and Pvt. Arnaud (Joe Turkel).
Kubrick is able to maintain the intensity of the combat scenes in the trial by photographing the proceedings in extreme close ups and long takes that mirror the earlier tracking sequences. The cavernous rooms of a chateau where it takes place are shown in deep focus with exaggerated lighting. The various figures are arranged in contrasting groups to further delineate their differences. While the enlisted men stand at attention or sit in straight-backed chairs, the mid-level officers are behind desks, and their officers recline on stuffed chairs and couches, tastefully set apart but not too far apart.
Though the characters have a certain forced and unnatural quality due to their circumstances, they seem real at the same time because the actors do such splendid work. Menjou and Macready are particularly effective in thoroughly despicable roles. Gen. Broulard is a study in reptilian gentility and manipulation. Gen. Mireau is more craven in his ambitious self-deception that's revealed in moments both large and small. Notice, for example, his “toast” right before the attack. As the three potential sacrificial victims, Meeker, Carey, and Turkel are equally good. They react to their situation in different but wholly believable ways, one turning to God, one fatalistically accepting his lot, one raging against it.
Though his role could easily be the thinnest and most stereotyped, Kirk Douglas is able to invest his heroic character with real emotional power. Douglas was involved in the film's production, and his personal belief in its message is evident in every frame. If he hadn't supported the film so strongly, it might well not have been made. Its anti-authoritarian message is directly at odds with the spirit of the decade. (Remember that one of the best-selling non-fiction books of the era was The Organization Man, which advocated the suppression of independent individual action to corporate conformity.)
The film's cynicism and moral outrage builds so steadily and deeply that any kind of conventional ending is perhaps impossible. The “hopeful” conclusion that Kubrick arrives at seems both insincere and unearned. The moment begins as a continuation of Kubrick's frosty view of humanity, taking it from the upper classes to the masses, but then it abruptly changes and seems to find redemption and reaffirmation of a sentimental idealism that has been shattered. It is the weakest part of the film. Seven years later, Kubrick would deal with the same subject and similar ideas more successfully in his black comedy, Dr. Strangelove.
Cast: Kirk Douglas (Col. Dax), Adolphe Menjou (Gen. Broulard), George Macready (Gen. Mireau), Ralph Meeker (Cpl. Paris), Richard Anderson (Maj. Saint-Auban), Wayne Morris (Lt. Roget), Timothy Carey (Pvt. Ferol), Susanne Christian (German singer), Bert Freed (St. Boulanger), Joe Turkel (Pvt. Arnaud), Peter Capell (Col. Judge); Written by: Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham, Jim Thompson; Cinematography by: Georg Krause; Music by: Gerald Fried; Technical Advisor: Baron von Waldendels. Producer: United Artists, James B. Harris. Awards: National Film Registry ‘92. Budget: $935,000. Running Time: 86 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, Closed Caption.