Friday Minute
No. 161 | September 17, 2010

It Was a Very Good Year … 1957

Our theme this week
Notable films of 1957

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Sweet Smell of Success
Tuesday         —   The Bridge on the River Kwai
Wednesday    —   12 Angry Men
Thursday        —   Wild Strawberries

Paths of Glory

I was ten when I first saw 2001:  A Space Odyssey, and I left the theater that afternoon with a new idea about what movies were all about.  I followed Stanley Kubrick’s career from then on.  Eventually, I caught up with his earlier films, but somehow I made it into my thirties before ever getting to Paths of Glory.  I shouldn’t have waited.  It’s one of his best.

Paths of Glory is a devastating portrayal of the French army during World War I.  For two years, the French and Germans have been engaged in a standoff, neither side advancing, neither retreating, locked down in the trenches.  The losses are measured in the hundreds of thousands.  Orders come down from above for the French soldiers to take the Anthill, a position held by the Germans.  It’s a suicidal mission, and when it’s not successful, General Mireau (George Macready) lays blame with the soldiers for their failure to muster sufficient effort.  Three men are court-martialed for cowardice.  Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) attempts to present a defense, but as the saying goes, military justice is an oxymoron.  The men are convicted and sentenced to die.

Kubrick made an antiwar film, but his target was more than just the military.  Paths of Glory is a parable for the battle between class divisions in society.  The general’s headquarters is a palatial estate, where at night grand balls are held.  It’s safely away from the fighting, where soldiers duck in the trenches as bombs blast a few yards away.  The officers fret over their petty careers, the men pay with their lives.  The enemy is said to be the Germans, but they’re never once seen on the screen.  As Orwell said in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.”  In Paths of Glory, General Mireau orders strikes against his own troops.  As General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou), Mireau’s superior, explains later to Dax, “One way to maintain discipline is to shoot a man now and then.”  That’s bluntly put, but the point is made.

It’s been said that all war films—even antiwar films—tend to glorify combat.  I never get that sense here.  The action is well-staged—it’s extraordinary, really—but there’s no appeal to it.  Kubrick makes his point and leaves no doubt.  War is hell, combat is frightening, life is not fair, and death is painful.

Paths of Glory is one of the great films of 1957, or any other year.  The writing is superb, with Kubrick and others adapting a 1930s novel by Humphrey Cobb.  The editing and sequencing of the the action is very effective, and there are many memorable scenes.  I’m especially fond of several, including one with the two generals discussing plans for the operation;  they speak in coded language, careful not to be too coarse about putting their careers over the lives of their men.  The acting is first-rate too, with Douglas, who carries much of the movie, at his best.  As Dax, the one officer with any decency, he finally lets his rage fly without concern for the consequences, and it’s a cathartic moment; he can’t change the gross injustice that’s occurred, but it gives the audience some relief to know that he, at least, is clear with the truth and will not be corrupted.

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Paths of Glory (1957)
Stanley Kubrick, director
Humphrey Cobb (novel); Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham, Jim Thompson (screenplay); writers
Georg Krause, cinematographer
Trailer

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Paths of Glory (1957)
Battle Scene

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Quote of note
Paris:  See that cockroach?  Tomorrow morning, we’ll be dead and it’ll be alive.  It’ll have more contact with my wife and child than I will.  I’ll be nothing, and it’ll be alive.
Ferol [he smashes the cockroach]:  Now you got the edge on him.
—Corporal Philippe Paris (Ralph Meeker), Private Maurice Ferol (Timothy Carey), Paths of Glory (1957)

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