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When you are the one who gets to resolve who lives and who dies, what are the criteria that the rest of us should steal into before giving our consent? If a general, or a CEO for that matter, asks the impossible, how far must men go in following their orders before disobedience is permissible? When is it ok for a cog in the machine to close being a machine and launch being a human being? This film suggests that the Ant Hill could only have been taken by live soldiers, and if all the soldiers were being slaughtered in the attempt to snide no mans land, the few survivors should naturally turn befriend, and live to fight another day. Under these circumstances, taking the Hill would have been impossible.
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Ah, but that was an embarrasment for the general who ordered the attack. His judgement could not have been bad, so, therefore, the men must be cowards. The role of Reason, the nature of absurdity, courage, and cowardice are all examined in this simple narrative, and the implication is determined that it is better to die bravely in front of a firing squad than to grow comfortable with mendacity and cower before the truth. The true cowards in the narrative were those who ordered these men to their deaths on the battlefield, because they were scared to say no and risk their reputations for heroic, and also those who ordered their deaths in front of a firing squad, and also those who concealed the truth out of panic of the consequences. Again, it is better to die bravely than live in cowardice. And the bravest of them all was the colonel played by Kirk Douglas, who fought for reason, justice, truth, and against the enemy on every side, even when the enemy was his excellent officer. Yes, the enemy can be found in your believe ranks, even among your commanding officers.
In the destroy they are all ordered assist to the front. However, the next to the last scene in the cafe, is one of the most incredible moments in cinematic history.
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The soldiers, young and worn, are making sport of a blooming young German girl who is being save forward by the proprietor for their entertainment. She has no talent, set for a diminutive ‘natural talent’ he says, gesturing along the length of her body. “She cannot dance, she cannot command jokes, but she has a golden throat, she sings like a bird”, he tells them. They are laughing and taunting her, and she is nervous and intimidated, and begins to scream, haltingly, but plaintively, and one by one, the men grow soundless. The camera moves from face to face, young, broken-down, battle weary, her snort reminds them of all that is graceful and sweet, all that is not brutal and meaningless and heinous. And they all can remember a time, long ago, when they were not fighting and killing and struggling to retain alive, and slowly, one by one, they originate wiping away the tears, then picking up her melody and gradually joining in. Kirk Douglas peers in through the window when the sargeant comes up with their orders to return to the front. “Give them a few more minutes,” he says, and turns heel. It is a devastating moment. This is a film with a distinct and mighty message. But it is not an anti-war movie. It is anti-mendacity, anti-authoritarian, and anti-injustice. The war setting is honest a timless trope to carry the weight of these more indispensable issues.
In 1916 France Commander Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) wants General Mireau (George Macready) to have his battered division retract the “Ant Hill”, an impregnable German fortress, promising Mireau a promotion and another yarn if he succeeds. Mireau orders Dax (Kirk Douglas) to lead the charge, which is a complete failure. When soldiers are pinned down by German artillery and machine gun fire Mireau orders his contain artillery to fire on their maintain trenches, screaming, “If those sweethearts won’t face German bullets, they’ll assume French ones!”
“Paths of Glory” has a deserved reputation as a huge anti-war film but I deem that director Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Humphrey Cobb’s 1935 semi-fictional unusual is a rather specific indictment of both a particular military and a particular war. The suicidal attack in the first act of the film was loosely based upon the battle for Fort Douamont during the Battle of Verdun, where over 300,000 French soldiers lost their lives. The assault, doomed to fail before it began, is ordered by French generals more concerned with prestige and promotions than the lives of their troops or the right prospects for success. In the wake of the anguish three men are selected to be tried and then executed for cowardice. They are defended in court by their commander, Colonel Dax, the lone yell of reason speaking out against the insanity of what has happened.
This film was banned for almost twenty years in France and it is an indictment of the French military on a par with those films that have touched on the contemptible Dreyfus case. I have difficulty extending this indictment beyond these French generals, not only because in cinematic history there is this sense of this being standard practice for the French military but also because hypocritically sending troops to such senseless death is rare in American military history. John Bell Hood sending Confederate troops in a series of useless charges to snort them a lesson at the Battle of Franklin comes to mind, but I remember most American generals as taking blame and responsibility for such slaughters (e.g., Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg, Robert E. Lee after Pickett’s Charge, Ulysses S. Grant with regard to the final assault at Chilly Harbor) .
But there is also a sense in which we identify this sort of slay of young soldiers with World War I. In cinematic terms the distinct comparison is to “Gallipoli,” where British troops are having tea on the beaches while Australian troops are gunned down in a needless charge ordered by stubborn British generals (another category of military leaders easy treat with disdain given how they are portrayed in the movies) . The Civil War has provided dash evidence that troops charging entrenched or fortified positions was horribly futile and yet fifty years later European armies were calm sending thousands of men against machine guns (the iconic weapon of the first World War) . As the opening narration explains, “Successful attacks were measured in hundreds of yards – and paid for in lives by hundreds of thousands.”
The title of the book/film comes from a line in Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” where the poet writes, “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” This might be an anti-war film but it unruffled shows the heroism of the troops as Kubrick uses a tracking shot to follow the Dax and his soldiers across No Man’s Land against the German fort. After all, these men are fighting an army that has invaded their country, so there is a sense in which the title is rotten simply because these men are not eager in a quest for glory.
The film was shot in Germany and cinematographer Georg Krause provides one of the sharpest unlit & white films you have ever seen. The clarity is almost daunting and it is impossible not to consider that it is not but another allotment of Kubrick’s spacious compose. As for the performance by Douglas I would agree with the general consensus that this is his finest performance, even over what he would provide for Kubrick three years later in “Spartacus.”
In the extinguish Kubrick makes a final argument for the universality of human experience when a German singer (Susanne Christian, who was Christiane Kubrick wife of the director) is forced to teach a song for the French troops whose jeers turn to tears. There are, relatively speaking compared to other wars, relatively few films about the First World War. But it is rather impressive when you inaugurate listing the ones that immediately approach to mind (“Wings,” “All Aloof on the Western Front,” “Sgt. York,” “Gallipoli”) how superb they tend to be and how many of them are, at their essence, anti-war films. For that, I mediate the credit for linking that particular war with the notion of the futility of war clearly belongs to Erich Maria Remarque, author of “All Unruffled on the Western Front.”
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