Paths of Glory (1957)

    Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory is one of those films I’ve been meaning to see for years, but for whatever reason just hadn’t. It was one of three Kubrick films that I had not seen, Fear and Desire and Barry Lyndon are still on my “to do” list. I’d always heard that it was a great film, one of the best war movies ever made, and it is a terrific film. It’s not the film I thought I was about to watch though. Paths of Glory was released in 1957 and yet I knew so little about its content that it surprised me by being only technically a “war” film, or even as I had heard over the years an “anti-war” movie. I suppose you could call it anti-war, but I found it to be more a statement of bureaucratic corruption.

    Kirk Douglas plays WWI French military Colonel Dax who is ordered by General Mireau (George Macready) to take a German stronghold, knowing it to be impossible. When Dax’s forces are unable to complete the mission Mireau demands that three men be chosen to stand trial for cowardice in the line of duty and, if found guilty, executed. Dax, who prior to his military service was a very successful lawyer, represents his men in the predetermined sham trial.

    Let me start by saying that, if like me, you have always wanted to see this film but just haven’t gotten around to it, you may not want to read on because it will contain spoilers. If you have seen it or just don’t care, please read on. Paths of Glory, in my opinion, is the first time we begin to see what the “Kubrick style” is going to be. I love his previous film The Killing (1956), but it doesn’t feel like what I’d come to expect from a Stanley Kubrick film. Paths of Glory has a lot of the watermarks of what we see in his films that followed. He didn’t have a big budget to work with so, I think, most of the budget went to casting Kirk Douglas and the battlefield scenes at the beginning of the movie. The rest was shot on a location is Germany, and he used that giant manor house and its grounds for all it was worth. I noticed that he moved the camera a lot. His use of dolly shots and pans kept the image interesting. When the camera wasn’t moving, and there are a few static scenes, someone is moving in the frame. A lot of dialogue is delivered while characters are pacing or walking somewhere. Something seems to be moving, either people or our perspective, almost all the time. Kubrick began using non-traditional angles and wide lenses too. Making the interior of this manor house look bigger than it probably really was, which reminded me a lot of how he later photographed the hotel in The Shining. The framing of each scene is beautiful too. Even the surprisingly violent for 1957 battle scenes. (I know it was a dummy, but A GUY GETS BLOWN UP!) His use of shadow and light is really interesting too. I could see images that would be repeated in some fashion in films like Dr. Strangelove, Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut. It looks like this is the film where Kubrick made his first big swings visually and dramatically and found that they more often than not worked.

    It has been said that Stanley Kubrick’s one challenge was working with his actors. We’ve all heard the stories of his treatment of them, most notably with Shelley Duvall in The Shining. While I am not discounting any of these accounts, I can only judge his work and the performances in them. Paths of Glory contains one of, if not the best performance I’ve seen by Kirk Douglas. There are stories of he and Kubrick butting heads during production, but when the original director of Spartacus was fired, who did Mr. Douglas approach to take over? That’s right. So, if they butted heads there must have been some serious mutual respect there too. All the performances are good, but I’ll just point out my personal favorites. One of the three men picked to stand trial was played by, even by 1957, veteran character actor Ralph Meeker (The Naked Spur and Kiss Me Deadly). Meeker’s Corporal Paris is, from his first moment on screen, an intelligent and good man. He’s my favorite character in the movie, and I already said how much I liked Douglas. He’s a regular guy, just trying to do his part in the war while keeping himself and his fellow soldiers safe. He has all the reactions that a real person would have. He questions what is going on, he gets angry, he falls apart emotionally, and pulls himself together to heroically meet his fate. He’s terrific in this movie. On the other hand, I thought Adolphe Menjou (the original A Star is Born) plays General Broulard, who basically engineered the whole mess, is great as a clever, suave, out of touch, and only in it for the power commander. At the end when he offers Douglas’ Colonel Max a promotion and Max tells the General what garbage he is, he seems totally shocked that Max didn’t do what he did for the sole purpose of promotion. He just couldn’t comprehend why anyone would do their job in service of their country and their men and not for selfish reasons. Menjou’s reaction in that scene summed the entire point of the story up in one look. One reaction. As a “hey I know that guy” moment, Richard Anderson, who would go on to be Oscar Goldman on the Six Million Dollar Man, plays Major Saint-Auban who prosecuted the trial of the three men. He was kind of a slimy guy. Much different from Oscar Goldman.

    The behind-the-scenes goings on during the making of Paths of Glory are pretty interesting too. The working relationship between Menjou and Kubrick was tested, according to Douglas, a few times where Menjou tried to throw his veteran actor weight around to challenge his young director, but it sounds like Kubrick just let him get it all out of his system and then they got back to making the film. But the worst cast member prize goes to Timothy Carey, who played one of the three condemned men and had appeared in Kubrick’s The Killing. He was notorious for scene stealing. Like moving around when he’s not the focus of the scene, messing with a prop or something while in the background. Which was annoying, but when he faked his own kidnapping and had to be retrieved from a local police station, which shut down production on a film where a major star, like Douglas, had to wait around for this knucklehead and his antics were dealt with was too much and he was fired from the movie. There are a few shots that were completed with a body double. He was also supposed to have a part in the battle scenes, that they shot last, but his character’s presence was just removed. To tell you the truth I would not have known any of that from seeing the movie. The body double shots are seamless, and I think not seeing the three men in the battle itself worked in the movie’s favor. Another interesting thing that happened was the casting of the only woman in the film- Susanne Christian. Who, a year later, would become Kubrick’s wife and be with him for the rest of his life.

    While I wouldn’t rank Paths of Glory as one of my favorite Stanley Kubrick films, it’s still a really good movie. Like I said before this film was not what I was expecting to see. I had “war movie’ in my head and, while it has that piece, it’s not what the film is. It is a statement on how someone in the middle of an organization, like a Colonel in the military, sometimes just can’t win in a system stacked with selfish, powerful people at the top. It was true in 1916 and is still true today. In places like corporations, police forces, and local, state, and national governments. Sometimes good people don’t win in the end, but good people still try. If you want to see the flip side of this idea, then you want to see Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Another great movie by the way. It takes on a similar subject.