Paths of Glory (1957)

Written by: Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham & Jim Thompson (screenplay), Humphrey Cobb (novel)
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, and Adolphe Menjou
Reviewer: Brett Gallman
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“Gentlemen of the court, there are times that I'm ashamed to be a member of the human race, and this is one such occasion.”
Reviewer's Rating: * * * * (4 Stars)

The titular paths of glory are actually nowhere to be found in this bleak anti-war film that finds Kirk Douglas defending a group of French soldiers that have been doomed to the gallows for cowardice during the first World War. At times, it feels like a prelude to Kubrick’s Spartacus, as Douglas is once again one of the lone honorable men caught up in an unjust world. It’s one where war is run by bureaucratic desk-men caught up in the old lie (“Dulce et Decorum est” writ large) and eager to sacrifice hordes of men in a fool’s errand to capture an impenetrable German stronghold.

One marvelously directed battle sequence captures the terror of the trenches and punctuates an otherwise low key affair that focuses on the corruption behind the battle lines. The backhanded political maneuverings are outrageously appalling and are contrasted with the innocent soldiers’ intimate, creeping realization of their own mortality. In the end, they can only hope to pray to a God that’s seemingly absent. Douglas’s character might be steadfast and cognizant of what true duty means, but the most he can do is give his men a few more minutes to somberly sing in a French bar before heading back to the trenches; that scene is technically a coda, but Kubrick’s perceptiveness and Douglas’s understated resignation indicate a struggle that will eternally rage beyond the frame.

Kubrick would later bare his satirical fangs towards war in Dr. Strangelove, but here, he bares his soul and captures the subtle, soul-crushing effect that it has on most men.

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