Paths of Glory

Rating:
Summary: Taught, tense, terrific.
Review: One of the great beauties of Paths of Glory is how no shot or word is wasted, how everything plays a part in the greater whole. The best art cuts away the inessential to leave you with a core that grips and provokes you, and that's cerainly true of this movie. Not only are the story and acting superb, but the perfectly taught pacing far outshines nearly every film I've seen, where bloat seems to be all too inevitable. Writers, directors, and editors everywhere could learn a lot from this film.

Rating:
Summary: Rare Moviemaking
Review: Paths of Glory is one of those rare movies that leaves a mark on one's soul. It is a tale like Billy Budd which places the viewer in the achingly helpless state which decent people find themselves in when wanting to rescue the oppressed from those who mark them for destruction. In both stories evil triumphs, not because good men have done nothing, but because their efforts fall short. One identifies as much with the valiant Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglass) and Captain Vere (Peter Ustinov in Billy Budd) as they do with the poor unfortunates they desperately want to save. These are bittersweet tales that leave one yearning for the day when injustice and oppression will no longer triumph. They not only entertain the mind, but they impress the spirit.

Rating:
Summary: This is the one.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The ultimate war movie
Review: Paths of glory is the ultimate war movie and probably the real Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Sic transit gloria
Review: According to Roger Ebert, French New-Waver Francois Truffaut said it was hard to make an antiwar film because war was exciting even if you were against it. That's why "Paths of Glory" isn't an antiwar movie.

Yet, it IS a masterful work. Why? Kubrick has been criticized for not being an "actor's director", that he was more concerned with composition and lighting than performance. Here, we benefit from early Kubrick, (before he became STANLEY KUBRICK) when perhaps inexperience and youth permitted the actors to bring their own artistry to his film. Because this film is ultimately about the people, not the warfare.

Here Kubrick shows us what happens when people collide in such violent, chaotic and absurd circumstances, when one man's reach for glory becomes other men's destruction, when honor and duty fail to bring an iota of good to the world. Despite all of that, the characters remain very human, sins and all.

Warfare is not a "thing", it's a collection of individual actions, the sum of which almost always is bleak, painful and unjust, made all the more horrible when we remember that all glory is fleeting.

Rating:
Summary: There is no such thing as shell shock
Review: Behind French lines in World War I, army generals are dissatisfied with their soldiers' lack of progress. The vain, scar-faced General Mireau (George Macready) is tempted with a promotion and taunted into ordering his men into a suicidal attack on a small German outpost, said to be of great significance to the war effort. Mireau in turn bullies his honorable lawyer-turned-corporal, Dax (Kirk Douglas) into carrying out the objective, even though the estimated casualties will be 65% of the regiment. Due to heavy German artillery, but more importantly, to poor communications behind their own lines, the objective is not taken. A furious Mireau wants 100 soldiers court-martialed, executed for cowardice. Dax bargains him down to three, and is confident that his criminal-defense prowess will save even those men. But what can he do, when the court-martial is a sham, without even a stenographer present?

Although dated from a technical standpoint, "Paths of Glory" is still a film of exceptional power. The final hour of the movie is staged like a play: characters conceived well before the ironic-small-talk revolution of the late 20th century speak to each other in weighty, dramatic soliloquies. But before that, there's a tightly-photographed, cacophonous fight sequence, masterfully set up by Kubrick and rivalling the authenticity of the opening reel of "Saving Private Ryan". Kubrick's film cameras prowl the trenches until you feel the claustrophobia.

The script doesn't have a single ounce of fat. Even though it's a war film set in the trenches, we don't see a single German combatant. Dax's regiment has more than just the German army to contend with, you see. The names are all significant: the first soldier killed in combat is named Lejeune, and the innocent corporal court-martialed to satisfy Mireau's bloodlust is named Paris. The objective for which the regiment must sustain 65% casualties is nothing less monumental than "the Ant Hill". And when the film's lone German finally appears, the French soldiers are, to a man, moved to tears.

87 minutes in length, "Paths of Glory" is half the size of "Pearl Harbor". There is something to be learned from that. Unfortunately, the DVD is just 25% the size of the "Pearl Harbor" box set. The only extra feature here is the original trailer. There is a "4-page booklet" accompanying the disc, but only two of those pages contain trivia. At least one of the facts in the booklet is clearly wrong, informing us that Wayne Morris's character is "killed early in the film". This is not so.

Rating:
Summary: I will take the Anthill
Review: This is one Stanley Kubrick's earliest films. Sadly Path of Glory is overshadowed by some of his latter ones such as "A Clockwork Organge" and "2001"

Three men are put on trial for the charge of Cowardice in the face of the enemy. This is a charge that, we see as the movie goes on, they do deserve even one tiny little bit. It becomes clear that these guys never did anything expect do their jobs. They do have one last chance and if they lose a death sentence awaits them.

My Impression-I liked this movie a great deal. It remined me of an Australian movie "Breaker Morant". That movie like this one really makes you think about both the hypocrisy of those in charge and the total callousness of the system.

I mean is it worth playing with the lives of three people just to prove a point?

Is it wrong for the guys at the top to even contemplate an attack even when they know that the attack has no chance of working in the first place?

How do you deal with death even when you don't deserve it?

This movie approaches these topics in a very mature fashion

One thing I didn't quite understand however. Did any of the rest of you notice that this is the French army of half these people sound like they just got off the train from Boston or The Bronx? Interesting isn't it?

Rating:
Summary: Paths of Glory
Review: I am not a great fan of Stanley Kubrick's most popular movies. But I very much enjoyed Paths of Glory. The impactful moments of treachery and defence of justice in the face of tyranny were more genuinely human than the more typical emotional distancing of Kubricks more celebrated works. Kirk Douglas turns in one of his strongest performances as the tough and gutsy commander Dax who knows as much at how to make an impact in a military board meeting as on the battlefield. He is the voice of compassion and reason in what is a very dark and cynical film about the politics of war. Some of the posturing of the evil French officials might seem over the top and cartoonish, but it works somehow because of the odd interplay of politeness mixed with the cavalier willingness to trade outrageously on human lives to score morale points with the men.

Rating:
Summary: Indictment of War...Affirmation of Humanity
Review: 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.

Is conscience among war's victims? That is certainly not true of 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.

Rating:
Summary: Required for the Military
Review: I remember being shown a few movies as a young 2nd Lt in the US Marine Corps (such as Zulu) but this should be at the top of the list of required movies. This one will make you think, it offers lessons in leadership, morality decisions, obeying senseless and perhaps illegal orders, and the results that occur. It also shows the bond between warriors who have been in combat. From a historical perspective, it is very accurate, and shows the reasons that the French Army revolted in 1917 agains the generals. Would American fighting men have put up with this behavior? I don't think so today, and this movie helps to educate why soldiers should not blindly follow orders. In today's world, the general would be fragged. I only hope that if I were ever placed in the position Col Dax is, that I would rise up to the challenge as well as he did. I strongly recommend this movie.