Study Questions: Week Six

Kubrick and the Genres of the 1950s

The Killing (1956)

Paths of Glory (1957)

Stanley Kubrick's films, with a few exceptions, are variations on the major Hollywood film genres. Of his first five feature films, two were film noir Killer's Kiss, 1955 and The Killing, 1956; two were war films (Fear and Desire, 1953 and Paths of Glory, 1957), and one was was from a sub-genre that enjoyed popularity during the 1950s: the biblical epic (Spartacus, 1960). He went on to science fiction (2001, 1968), the historical romance (Barry Lyndon, 1975), horror (The Shining, 1980) and another war film (Full Metal Jacket, 1987). Even films which are not easily identified with a major genre regularly employ their conventions Lolita (1962) borrows from the road film; Dr. Strangelove (1964) draws on the war narrative; A Clockwork Orange (1971) uses the futuristic setting of science fiction. Kubrick, however, never just reworks familiar narrative patterns; he transforms those patterns into films which express his very personal view of life.

The Killing: After today, We'll Be on Easy Street.

1. Why does Kubrick use the elaborate narrative structure of flashbacks and parallel plots? How does it help point up the contrast between the elegance of the plans for the robbery with the traps and missteps of actual events?

2. How many elements of the noir style can you find in the use of visual imagery, the motifs of traps and betrayals, the fate of the protagonists, the construction of the various characters?

3. How does Kubrick give his characters a sense of individuality by using flashbacks to give biographical information?

4. How do the motives for taking part in the robbery set the members of Johnny's crew apart from the typical gangster?

5. How are women presented in the film? Are they individualized, or do they pretty much reflect familiar stereotypes?

6. How do human instincts (especially love and sex) serve to frustrate intellect and reason in this film?

7. What is the purpose of the racial outburst in the race track parking lot? Does it serve for more than a diversion to allow Nikki to do his job?

8. How effective is the voice over in this film? How does the cold, clear newsreel style of the voice seem at cross-purposes with the chaos at the end of the film?

9. How does Sherry's lover serve as Johnny Clay's nemesis?

10. Why does Johnny let Sherry go after catching her eavesdropping? What flaw in Johnny's character is revealed in this scene?

11. What small, unanticipated events threaten the success of Johnny's plan?

12. What is the significance of the film's title (which Kubrick changed while adapting the novel)? Does it have more than one meaning? Sherry's dying comment is that her life has been "a bad joke without a punch line." Johnny's reaction to the failure of his plan is "what's the difference." How do these bitter statements tend to sum up the world view of the film noir?

Paths of Glory Lead Only to the Grave.

1. Like The Killing, Paths of Glory explores the ways in which human reason, the capacity for making plans that will give the characters control of their world, is frustrated both by external circumstances and the irrational and destructive inner drives of the characters themselves. How does Mireau's (George McCready) plan to take the "Anthill" reflect this dilemma?

2. How do the long tracking shots of the trenches and of the chateau serving as the French headquarters establish visually the contrasts between the war of the planners and the war of the soldiers?

3. Paths is certainly a film about war, but it is very different from the familiar Hollywood war film. For example, how does the behavior and the fate of Col. Dax (Kirk Douglas) differ from that the protagonist in most war films (even Saving Private Ryan)?

4. Why can the actions and the motives of the generals better be described careerist rather than patriotic? How does their behavior reveal the military as an institution is governed by practices which frustrate its assigned goal (victory)?

5. In most war films the narrative contains two dramatic battles, one in which the fighting unit (here Dax's regiment) is tested in battle and a second in which their experience allows them to prevail in a battle which is associated with the ultimate victory over the enemy (D-Day and the battle for the bridge in Saving Private Ryan). How does Kubrick alter those conventions in Paths in order to call the heroic ideals of earlier war films into question?

6. Why is Dax revealed to be a lawyer in civilian life? He is a career officer in Cobb's novel.

7. The film was praised for its "realism." Would you agree? What is meant by "realism" anyway? The battle scenes (and many others) seem choreographed. So is what is being praised as "realistic" related to the film's style or to its treatment of war?

8. Dax quotes Samuel Johnson when he remarks that "patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels." What exactly does he mean, and how might this comment describe the enormous difference between the way war is discussed by planners and is experienced by soldiers?

9. What is the thematic significance of the final sequence in which French soldiers listen to a German girl sing about home? Is it to be seen as a sentimental or an ironic comment on what has happened and what is to come?

10. Paths has often been described as an antiwar film. Why would you agree? Is it an attack on war or on the military systems which fight them? Could war be seen as a condition of human existence?