Paths of Glory (1957)

Paths of Glory is one of the best American greatest anti-war (or, more accurately, anti-military films ever produced, ranking with Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (1970).

Kirk Douglas, in one of his finest portrayals, is Colonel Dax, the commander of the battle-decimated 701st Infantry Regiment of the French Army dug in along the Western Front in a stalemated WWI. It is 1916 and the Allies have been struggling to overcome an equally determined German war machine for two years. Dax, who was a criminal lawyer during peacetime, hopes that his regiment will be relieved from front-line duty. The high command has other plans. The generals General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou), corps commander and suave representative of the high command, arrives at the placid, beautiful chateau that serves as headquarters for General Mireau (George Macready), the divisional general in charge. Broulard tells Mireau that his division has been dormant and must now make an all-out attack against an impregnable German position nicknamed the Ant Hill and that this position must be captured within 48 hours.

The vainglorious Mireau is persuaded to undertake this impossible task by Broulard's promise of a rapid promotion. Mireau, pompous, his general's uniform immaculate, visits the trenches where the 701st resides. Marching down the trenches, Mireau looks disdainfully over the men he commands, stopping now and then to inquire as to their well-being and moving on without waiting for a response. He orders a shell-shocked soldier (Frederic Bell) transferred out of the regiment as an undesirable mental incompetent. Mireau slaps the soldier, trying to snap him out of his mental state, but succeeds only in reducing him to tears.

When Mireau informs Dax that his men must take the Ant Hill, Dax explodes, shouting that such a feat is not only impossible but that almost all of his men will be killed attempting such a suicidal attack. Mireau, unruffled, counters that perhaps half of Dax's men will be killed, not too high a price to pay for such a military prize. The ensuing battle depicted here was drawn from the bloody fight for Fort Douamont during the battle of Verdun, a six-month struggle that turned into the worst bloodbath of WWI, claiming the lives of 315,000 French soldiers. Dax continues to argue with Mireau, who threatens to relieve Dax of his command unless he goes through with the attack.

To stay close to his men and protect them as much as possible, Dax agrees to lead the attack. Before the attack That night a patrol, led by cowardly, drunken Lieutenant Roget (Wayne Morris, who, ironically, was one of America's most decorated flying aces during World War II), crawls through no-man's-land to survey the Ant Hill. The Germans send up flares, and Roget becomes frightened, telling another soldier, Corporal Paris (Ralph Meeker), that they should return to their own lines and forget about an advance scout LeJeune (Kem Dibbs), whom he has sent ahead. Paris tells him to wait for the scout, but Roget panics, throws a grenade, and runs back to the French lines. Paris finds LeJeune killed, blown up by Roget's grenade. Later, when Dax comes into the bunker and asks for a report, Roget congratulates Paris on a good patrol and dismisses him. Rather than risk accusing an officer of wrongdoing, Paris salutes and retires.

Roget then tells Dax that LeJeune was killed by machine gun fire when he coughed. The attack is set for the next morning with only minimal artillery support so as not to alert the enemy to a full-scale advance. The troops talk through the night; a private, Arnoud (Joseph Turkel) is mostly concerned about being killed by a bayonet. At dawn, Dax walks solemnly through the trenches, inspecting his waiting men, who stand ready with fixed bayonets to go over the top. At the zero hour, Dax climbs to the top of the trench and blows his whistle; his men pour over, thousands of them, through no-man's-land, where they are slaughtered before reaching the halfway point. Through a rear telescope, Mireau sees that a whole company has not left the trenches. He orders his artillery to open fire on his own trenches, but the battery commander Rousseau (John Stein) refuses without a written order.

Dax returns to the trenches and tries to get the men there to attack, but they will not budge. When Dax attempts to lead the men out of the trenches, he is knocked backwards onto the duckboards by the bodies of soldiers falling on top of him. Court martial The attack has been an utter failure. Mireau, at his observation post, explodes, yelling: "If those little sweethearts won't face German bullets, they'll face French ones!" First Mireau wants to court-martial the entire regiment, then, in a conference with Dax and Broulard, demands that 100 men be shot as examples of extreme cowardice. Arguing that the regiment has shown bravery in the past, Dax offers himself, but Broulard brushes off the notion. Broulard and Mireau finally agree that only three men will be selected, tried, and then shot.

Dax is appointed defense attorney for the three men to be picked at random by their officers. Arnoud, a radical, a half-wit Pvt. Ferol (Timothy Carey), and Paris, selected by Roget to cover up his own sins, are picked to stand trial. Dax appears before the court-martial and tries to defend the three men, but at every turn the kangaroo court-martial dismisses his evidence, refuses the testimony of witnesses, and will not allow any real defense of the victimized men. Each man gives his version of what occurred during the attack and what he did or did not do. Ferol explains that all in his platoon were killed, except himself and a private named Meyer.

The arrogant chief of the court-martial (Peter Capell) and the prosecuting attorney Maj. Saint-Auban (Richard Anderson) and yes-man to Mireau badger Ferol into admitting that he only advanced about halfway across no-man's-land before he turned back. Dax then cross-examines Ferol, ironically pointing out that even though he and Meyer were the only ones left alive in his platoon, they should have gone ahead. Dax tries to defend Arnoud by citing the medals Arnoud earned in previous engagements, but the Judge argues that Arnoud is "not being tried for his former bravery but his current cowardice." Dax then has Paris testify that he was knocked unconscious as he tried to go over the top and has the scar on his head to prove it. None of this means anything to a court that considers the three men, in Saint-Auban's pompous words, "a blot on the honor of the French nation." In his closing arguments, Dax protests the injustice of the trial, finally begging for mercy from the court. Condemned men All three men are condemned, however, and a last meal is brought to them. During an altercation, Arnoud strikes his head on a concrete beam and fractures his skull. He is unconscious but is still ordered to be executed. Rousseau, the captain of the battery of artillery for the division, comes to Dax with information that will have "a bearing on the court-martial." Final pleas Later that evening, Dax goes to a grand chateau and asks to see Broulard, who excuses himself from dancing at a ball and meets with Dax in a huge, elegant library. Broulard has a drink with him and, projecting an avuncular image, tells him that "troops crave discipline and one way to maintain discipline is to shoot a man every now and then." After vainly begging Broulard to spare the three condemned men, Dax tells him that he has sworn affidavits from two officers and an enlisted man stating that Mireau ordered the artillery to shell his own trenches. He suggests that such information, if it reached the press, could be hurtful. Broulard keeps the affidavits but walks out, saying: "Will you pardon me, Colonel Dax, I've been rude to my guests too long." Execution The next morning, Ferol, Paris, and Arnoud—the latter carried unconscious on a stretcher—are marched before their regiment, tied to posts, and shot to death by a firing squad commanded by Roget. Scapegoat Following the execution, Mireau and Broulard sit in the chateau eating a hearty breakfast. "The men died wonderfully," says Mireau. Dax enters, and Broulard confronts Mireau with the charge that he ordered his artillery to fire on his own men. Broulard smoothly says there must be an inquiry.

Mireau stands up in shock and says to Broulard: "So that's it—you're making me the goat of the whole affair!" Enraged, Mireau storms out. Then Broulard offers Dax Mireau's job with a promotion to general, figuring that was what he was after. Dax angrily rejects the offer and berates the powerful general for his moral degeneracy. "Soldier Boy." Returning to his command, Dax stands outside a pub where the proprietor has brought a young German girl (Susanne Christian, later Kubrick's wife), to entertain the French troops. The soldiers hoot and catcall so loudly that the German girl cannot be heard singing her simple song; she is so terrified that she cries but keeps on singing until the shouting and whistles drop off. Her plaintive, thin voice is heard singing a universally known song called "Soldier Boy." Soon, the French soldiers are humming along with her, their faces drawn, their eyes watery, some with tears sliding uncontrollably down their cheeks as the song evokes memories of their youth, their homes, a world they will probably never see again. The girl sings in German, and the Frenchmen hum along with her, a deep resonant humming that seems to reverberate from their very souls.

Realizing that his men are not completely dehumanized, Dax tells Sergeant Boulanger (Bert Freed) to give the men a few more minutes and then resolutely marches back to his headquarters. The martial music at the end of the film is a low-register delivery of the "Soldier Boy" song, whereas the opening of the film (the only other place where music is evident) presents a brisk military version of "The Marseillaise."

Great acting Stanley Kubrick's direction of this stirring and emotional film is flawless, and every frame is filled with great acting, from Kirk Douglas, who was never better, down to the smallest bit player. The disregard most of the high command had for the lost lives of their men is embodied chillingly in patrician George Macready and foxy Adolphe Menjou, two absolutely vicious scoundrels who typify the old and self-indulgent generals responsible for the eradication of a whole generation of young men. Morris is wonderful as the drunken coward, Richard Anderson repulsive as the slick toady to Macready, and Ralph Meeker is terrific as the decent trooper who dies only because of his knowledge that his superior is a coward. Timothy Carey, as the incompetent victim, is also jarring, as is the disillusioned Joseph Turkel.

The battle scenes showing the attack on the Ant Hill are devastating, brutally authentic, and the barrage through which Douglas leads his men—Kubrick's cameras tracking along in startling truck and boom shots—is a hurricane of death that comes as close to the real thing as anything ever dramatized. At the same time, the attackers move in a carefully choreographed dance of death.

Kubrick's theme is less an anti-war statement (war is treated as a condition of existence) than an attack on bureaucratic systems with little regard for either their reak goals or for human life, a recurring theme in Kubrick's films. It is also a statement of human courage, human compassion, and the kind of white-heat will that insists upon survival despite the destructive efforts of inhuman systems. Paths of Glory says with brilliance that this spirit will never die. Every general staff officer of every nation in the world should be compelled to watch this film at least once a year, and it is hoped they will remember that they command not armies but men, flesh and blood.

France did not wish to remember the brutal first world war and banned Paths of Glory from its theaters when it was released; in fact, it is still banned as a slander against French honor. (It was briefly banned from American military bases.) The script is literate and shrewd, as was Cobb's provocative novel, which appeared in 1934. (The novel, based on an actual incident, was not endorsed in France, either, and Cobb was not a welcome visitor to that country after penning his indictment of the French militarists.)

Some of the shots used by Kubrick and marvelously photographed by Georg Krause (particularly those in the pub showing the French soldiers) are almost identical to still photographs that appear in an out-of-print pictorial called The Great War, written and edited by Laurence Stallings. Kubrick's presence is always felt but never interferes with the astounding traveling shots through the trenches, where the common troops cringe in claustrophobic terror, and the expansive ballrooms, where the generals dally. Then there is that terrible approaching shot as the three condemned men move inexorably toward the three black stakes against which they will end their lives, stakes that loom larger and larger as the men and the camera approach.

There is grim irony everywhere, especially when Macready views the desperate, frenzied, and confused attack on the Ant Hill from his distant position as if enjoying a spectator sport. In this brief scene alone Kubrick captures the hypocrisy and murderous power of the military caste system.

Although the French had no love for Paths of Glory, Winston Churchill expressed his admiration for the authenticity of the battle scenes. These amazing sequences were shot outside the village of Pucheim, west of Munich (the entire film was shot in Germany). Douglas's production company, which brought this magnificent film into existence, hired dozens of German workmen to change several acres into a vast moonscape of no-man's-land, gouging out the crater holes, bomb holes, huge ruts, and gullies, filling some with water, strewing the area with barbed wire and then planting hundreds of explosives throughout to be set off during the attack on the Ant Hill. Hundreds of German policemen were hired as extras to play the French troops, while six cameras tracked the attack, recording the "deaths" of scores of actors who were given little maps showing their "dying zones," the exact locations in the battle area where they were to be hit by machine gun bullets or shrapnel from bombs and fall dead.

Film's influences The composition for these scenes owed a debt to battle scenes in two Warner Bros. World War I films, The Fighting 69th (1940) and Sergeant York (1941). It is obvious also that Kubrick was mightily influenced by Max Ophuls , who was known for his countless dolly shots, and by the fluid styles of certain Russian directors. In order to allow room for Kubrick's rolling cameras, the trenches down which Douglas and Macready march were made six feet wide, about two feet wider than the real trenches of World War I. Douglas acquired the book rights to the Cobb novel and then hired the relatively unknown Kubrick to direct. Their achievement with Paths of Glory led to their later collaboration in producing the spectacle Spartacus (1960). Paths of Glory, although it appeared to be a very expensive film, cost only $900,000 to produce (whereas Spartacus would cost $10 million).

Performer, Character

Kirk Douglas, Col. Dax

Ralph Meeker, Cpl. Paris

Adolphe Menjou, Gen. Broulard

George Macready, Gen. Mireau

Wayne Morris, Lt. Roget

Richard Anderson, Maj. Saint-Auban

Joseph Turkel, Pvt. Arnoud

Timothy Carey, Pvt. Ferol

Peter Capell, Col. Judge

Suzanne Christian, The German Girl

Bert Freed, Sgt. Boulanger

Emile Meyer, Priest

Production Credits:

Producer, James B. Harris

Director, Stanley Kubrick

Screenwriters: Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham and Jim Thompson (based on the novel by Humphrey Cobb)

Editor, Eva Kroll

Cinematographer, Georg Krause

Composer, Gerald Fried