Paths of Glory (1957)

“The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
- Elegy written in a church courtyard, Thomas Gray


Everything you’ve heard is true: Paths of Glory is as potent and gripping today as it was when it was released 51(!) years ago. After conquering the crime genre with The Killing (1956, only his 3rd film), Kubrick conquered the war genre, producing the single best English-language war film in cinematic history (excepting perhaps Apocalypse Now), a vicious satire of military bureaucracy and the farcical allegiance to the chain-of-command. Paths of Glory alternates between compassionate irony and bleak absurdity to illustrate the horrendous folly of war. 10,000 men’s lives are lost for a few yards, to capture a building on a spot of land, which they have been told, means something.

A man’s life is not terribly important to him, unless, of course, it is his own, but if it’s not his life, why not sacrifice it for 15 meters, as long as it promotes his reputation? That is the ugly mindset of General Mireau (George MacReady), the officer putting his promotion in jeopardy if his men do not accomplish the impossible. He has been ordered by the genial sociopath General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) to take a particularly pesky battlement, the terribly important “Ant Hill” in order to show tangible results of progress. Broulard is the highest ranking officer in the film, but the subtle pressure he puts on Mireau implies that he himself is being pressured by another, even more aloof higher-up.

The two Generals negotiate promotions in ivory ballrooms lined with towering windows, coldly determining ideal strategies to overcome impossible circumstances at the great bodily risk of pawns under their command. The Grandmasters chat as the outside floods the inner rooms, penetrating their sequestered plotting, bathing it in naked daylight. Later, the same daylight lurks in a ballroom where a devastating injustice is taking place, flooding, and remaining, stubbornly, like an elephant in the room.

It is in the use of light, the use of color (yes, black and white provides a color all its own), that Paths of Glory rewards the attention that has been apprehended by the cruel story of three men chosen, by lottery, to serve as scapegoats for a major tactical setback for the French Army during World War I. Like The Killing, Paths of Glory presents lustrous black-and-white imagery with deep rich blacks, cinematography crisper and sharper than most other black-and-white films from that period, and even more arresting for the meticulous manner in which Kubrick lights it, every image a marvelous raising of the bar of brilliant photography.

There are many powerful performances, especially George MacReady as the monstrously proud General Mireau, and the great, sometimes volcanic force of Kirk Douglas as the heroic Col. Dax.

The considerable acting is integrated so well into Kubrick's vision and served so proficiently by the photography that it is no surprise that, after Kubrick completed it, he was hailed as some sort of prodigy with a prescient sensibility peerless in its cunning assuredness.

Kubrick was well known for his devilish sense of humor and inevitably his black irony was misinterpreted as misogyny, nihilism, and misanthropy. The devilish sense of humor may have been magnified in later works like A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket, but they are prominent in The Killing and Paths of Glory as well. From the man condemned for cowardice for not leaving the trenches despite being knocked unconscious, to the condemned man with the skull fracture roused alert just in time for his execution, Kubrick is already pushing his exceptional cynicism to the breaking point for maximum poignant horror and dismay.

After the film was released, it was banned in France, as the film was considered “an offense to the honor of their army.” The film was also banned in Spain for its anti-military message and in Germany because they feared it might “strain relations with France.”

It would not be allowed to be exhibited in France until 1975.



Grade: A+