Cinephiles congregate around the films of Stanley Kubrick the way history buffs are drawn to Alexander, Hitler and Napoleon. They were all-powerful control freaks who set out to remake the world in an image they saw in their own minds, and gained the power to attempt it.
So it was with Kubrick, a chess fanatic who came along too late to have grown up with the world-building games that connect new generations of Kubrick fans to his films and his career. He is admired by fans at least partly because of his dictatorial powers over the worlds he created in his films.
He was an Orson Welles who won absolute power over his career and his movies, a Spielberg with more grandiose visions and ambitions.
“Paths of Glory” was a brisk and biting World War I anti-war film, a politicized combat movie that reset the standard for trench warfare movies. It was Kubrick’s first “all-star” production, thanks to Kirk Douglas, who co-produced it and attracted a “name” cast of Hollywood supporting players.
As he and his partner James Harris had co-producing credits, he had at least some control over his second United Artists release, control he wouldn’t do without after the experience of his next film with Douglas, the Roman epic “Spartacus.”
This 1957 film is quintessentially Kubrick, even though it wouldn’t bear the elephantiasis of his best known pictures — epic length even when the subject matter didn’t seem to command it. Only “Doctor Strangelove” would be as short, sweet and to the point as “Paths of Glory,” the one later Kubrick film to clock in at well under two hours. The intimate, creepy and dark “nymphet” comedy “Lolita” somehow became a two hour and thirty-three minute endurance contest thanks to his “final cut.”
The Kubrickian camera compositions, riveting long takes and tracking shots, production design and spare sound design give “Paths of Glory” a grandiosity beyond its brief time frame — just a couple of days in 1916 France — and 88 minute running time. It’s magnificent, and until “1917” and the most recent “All Quiet on the Western Front,” was the gold standard for recreations of “The Great War,” its trenches and the slaughter of No Man’s Land.
The story is a parable of class wrapped in an anti-war fable. It’s based on a Humphrey Cobb novel that was in turn based on a real incident — the French Army executing soldiers, at random, for an attack that failed. The soldiers died labeled “cowards” while the bungling officers who ordered their deaths sipped cognac and got off scot-free.
Douglas plays Col. Dax, a regimental commander who was a famous lawyer in civilian life. He is the middle class middle man, trapped between soldiers he is loyal to and the orders of an aloof, upper class General Mireau (George Macready, his face bearing a dueling scar, his every clipped line reeking of “good breeding” and privilege) charged with making a futile attack. Mireau is reluctant to accept the task of seizing the fortified “Ant Hill” objective of the assault, but caves in with a smirt because he craves the promotion offered by the conniving, manipulative General Broullard (Adolphe Menjou, chuckling, patronizing corruption incarnate).
There were cowards in the ranks, symbolized by the drunken, blame-passing Lt. Roget (Wayne Morris). But he’s able to CYA just a little while longer by selecting Corporal Paris (Ralph Meeker, in top form) as the man from his unit marked for execution, the one man with first-person knowledge of Roget’s murderous incompetence.
Kubrick’s “The Killing” trigger-man Timothy Carey plays an almost comically-dismayed soldier chosen to be shot “to set an example” for the ranks. And Joe Turkel, another “Killing” alumnus who’d go on to screen immortality as “Lloyd” the bartender in “The Shining” and as the villainous tycoon “Dr. Tyrell” in Ridley Scott’s “Bladerunner,” plays the unluckiest of all, a victim selected by drawing lots.
Dax insists on being allowed to represent them in their court martial. But it’s an exercise in officious futility in front of officers who have already decided the three’s fate.
Kubrick’s military-styled mastery of the technique of staging a battle became part of the lore making up his mystique. Georg Krause’s camera tracked through the battlefield, following the whistle-blowing Col. Dax, with Kubrick breaking down sections of No Man’s Land into killing zones, with each extra assigned a zone to “die” in.
This would bear fruit in “Spartacus” and “Barry Lyndon” battle scenes, and whetted Kubrick’s appetite for his planned late 1960s “Napoleon” picture.
The crowded, nicely-detailed but overly-tidy-and-quiet trenches and dugouts of the line are contrasted with the echoing opulence of the chateaus where the top officers reside, work, dine and dance in a formal ball, removed from the murderous combat they’re responsible for.
We’re allowed to think of this film’s class warfare and callous incompetence as “French” with our eyes. But our ears cast away that distancing, as they’re filled with American accents, especially in the ranks. Meeker, Carey and veteran mug Emile Meyer, cast as the priest summoned to minister to the condemned men, underscore that.
The most revolting snob in the officer corps is Maj. Saint-Auban, a sneering social climber and aide who mimics General Mireau’s “childish” “animals” patronizing regard for the footsoldiers.
“If these little sweethearts won’t face German bullets,” Mireau sneers, “let them face French ones!”
Saint-Auban, played by the future boss of “The Six Million Dollar Man,” Richard Anderson, will be his contemptuous prosecutor in the trail.
The performances are uniformly sharp and compact, with the oft-hammy Douglas setting the standard. Meeker, Turkel, character actors Bert Freed (as an unsentimental Sgt.) and John Stein (as an unflappable artillery captain) are outstanding in small roles.
Legend has it that Carey tried to ham it up and steal the incarceration, court and execution scenes and that at one point Kubrick put him through 50+ takes to correct this. Whatever Carey’s acting foibles (he’s great here), Kubrick got in a very bad habit with that bit of dictatorial indulgence. He became infamous for the number of takes he’d demand.
But the results speak for themselves, perfect frame after perfect frame, scene by succinct scene and with performances that register, as sharply as ever, 70 years after “Paths of Glory” came to the screen.
This film is the one that placed Kubrick firmly on the path to his own glory, a reputation for being one of the cinema’s most infamous perfectionists and one of its finest artists built on “Dr. Strangelove,” “2001,” “A Clockwork Orange, “Full Metal Jacket,” and this film, undeniably marking the former Look Magazine photographer for greatness way back in 1957.
Rating: “approved,” violence
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, George Macready, Adolphe Menjou, Richard Anderson, Wayne Morris, Timothy Carey and Joe Turkel.
Credits: Directed by Stanley Kubrick, scripted by Kubrick, Calder Willingham and Jim Thompson, based on the novel by Humphrey Cobb. An MGM release on Tubi, Movies!, Amazon, Youtube etc.
Running time: 1:28
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