Paths of Glory (1957)

Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory is a film depicting World War 1. In the beginning of the film, a French general orders an attack on a hill despite protest from the colonel to whom he gives these orders. It is obvious from the beginning that the attack is nothing but a suicide mission, but the troops attempt to proceed losing many men in the process before abandoning the mission. In an attempt to cover up his own incompetence, the general orders 100 (later reduced to 3) French soldiers to be executed for cowardice. They are court-martialed and their defense attorney is the colonel who protested the attack to begin with. Overall, this film is pretty good. My main complaint would be the ending. Just moments before the ending, Kirk Douglas delivers some pretty good dialogue but then there's a scene that seems mostly irrelevant right after this. I would say that ending the film two minutes sooner would leave a much better final impression. While I can appreciate what Kubrick was attempting to do at the end with a singer at a bar, I feel like this ending sequence had very little to do with the rest of the movie and totally ruined an otherwise great ending.

The film stars, amongst others, Kirk Douglas. Although this type of film probably doesn't necessitate any big stars, Douglas is still quite good and I can't imagine the film with someone else. His speeches during the trial and at just before the end of the film are both quite well-done.

Although Kubrick denies that any of his war films were necessarily anti-war, this film does carry a reasonably strong anti-war message. It isn't as strong as in other World War 1 films such as All Quiet on the Western Front, but is stronger than in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick instead said this film was anti-authoritarian ignorance, and I would agree with this assessment as well. This theme was revisited in several of Kubrick's later films and is probably much stronger in something like Dr. Strangelove.

Overall, this is a pretty solid effort. As mentioned earlier, I did not care for the last two minutes of the film at all. Generally having someone sing a song in a bar at the end of a film wouldn't be that big of a deal, but this film had a perfect ending just moments earlier and I will therefore penalize the film's final score rather severely as a result of this ending. Even with this rather major flaw, the film is pretty good and a must-see for fans of war movies.

82.5/100
B-

UP NEXT: Still more Stanley Kubrick, The Killing.