The Kubrick Series #5: Paths of Glory

THE KUBRICK SERIES #5:

PATHS OF GLORY

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth eér gave,

Awaits alike th'inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead to but the grave."

- Thomas Gray

"There is no such thing as an anti-war film". Thus reads the famous quote by French filmmaker Francois Truffaut. Although he never explained the meaning of the quote, the most common interpretation of it indicates that any film that depicts war cannot truly be anti-war since cinema, as a medium, tends to glamorize and romanticise any subject matter it touches. And the war genre is perhaps the easiest genre to glamorize. Although the intention of most filmmakers is probably to make anti-war films, the truth of the matter is that the majority of them tend to be just the opposite. Frankly, more often than not they mostly serve as recruitment tools to make people join the army than scare people off from ever joining it. But to counter Truffaut's argument, I think there are films that are actually successful in their attempt to demonize war. Films like Apocalypse Now, Downfall, All Quiet on the Western Front, Das Boot, The Thin Red Line, Gallipoli, The Deer Hunter etc all do a very good job in my opinion of showing the horrors of war. And one of the finest additions to that list of great films is Stanley Kubrick's brilliant masterpiece Paths of Glory from 1957.

Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax.

After the critical success of The Killing, Kubrick and his producing partner James B. Harris were offered to work with MGM for their next project. Unfortunately, the two projects Kubrick and Harris proposed, an adaptation of Stefan Zweig's The Burning Secret and another adaptaion of Calder Willingham's novel Natural Child, were turned down by MGM due to their subject matters. Eventually Kubrick remembered a book he had read when he was younger (probably one of the few books he liked to read) called Paths of Glory by Humphrey Cobb, and thought it could make a darn good movie. But due to the darkness of the source material no studio in Hollywood would touch it. Eventually however, the project was sent to Kirk Douglas, who loved the script and is believed to have said "I don't think this picture will ever make a nickel, but we have to make it". With Douglas signed on as both the star and the executive producer through his Bryna Productions, the film found its home at United Artists, making it Kubrick's third consecutive film released by UA, and was budgeted at around $1 million, which was not an extraordinary sum for a big scale war film, but was still Kubrick's highest-budgeted film at the time. Due to the nature of the subject matter and its criticisms of the French Army, the film was shot in Germany to avoid any trouble with the French authorities.

Stanley Kubrick and Kirk Douglas casually chilling in No Man's Land as you do.

Paths of Glory is set in France in 1916 during the height of World War I. As the voice-over explains, both sides have been stuck in trench warfare since the beginning of the war and neither had made any significant progress. At a French army headquarters located in a fancy castle, General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) orders one of his division commanders and close friends General Mireau (George Macready) to attack the Ant Hill. Mireau initially refuses, and calls any attack a suicide mission. But when Broulard mentions a possible promotion, Mireau completely changes and gives in to the credibility of the charge. The charge is to be led by Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), who reluctantly agrees to partake in the assault. When, to no one's surprise really, the attack fails, Mireau blames the failure on his soldiers and orders three of them to be court martial on the charge of cowardice. Dax, who once served as a defense attorney before the war, will oversee the defense of the three accused men.

Since the entirety of the film was shot in Germany, Kubrick work with a mostly German crew, including cinematographer Georg Krause, editor Eva Kroll, art director Ludwig Reiber and costume designer Ilse Dubois. This would collectively be their only collaboration with Kubrick, but they all do a first-rate job in their respective areas. First things first, the photography is splendid. It is in my opinion with this film that Kubrick perfected the fluid camera moves he saw and admired in the films of Max Ophüls, and he successfully manages to turn the camera into an active participant in the drama rather than the camera serving as an objective observer. A pefect example would be the famous shot of Douglas walking right through the trench minutes before the attack. You can feel the dread and anxiety that must be going through everyone's mind at that moment. This is also the first time in a Kubrick film to utilize a zoom lens, a relatively new technique at the time which would go on to become a recurring trademark in his later films. This could be seen as the first indicator of Kubrick intermixing the old with the new, as far as cinematic technique is concerned.

The infamous trench shot I'm referring to is this one, which has now become a staple of WW1 movies. The camera cuts between these two shots: a profile shot tracking Douglas from the front (pictured above) and a POV-shot showing the reaction of his men.

The score should also be mentioned. Working on his fourth consecutive and final collaboration with composer Gerald Fried, the score is used sparingly, and much of the score makes highly effective use of military drums. But perhaps the two most memorable pieces of music in the film are found in the beginning and the end. The opening credits are all scored to a version of the French national anthem La Marseillaise, which helps underscore the brutal and bleak irony of the film. A national anthem is generally supposed to inflict pride and respect in the people living in their respective country. But this film fills you with everything but pride and respect, and it works brilliantly. I will come back to the use of music in the film's ending later on.

From top to bottowm: Timothy Carey (Private Ferol), Joe Turkel (Private Arnaud) and Ralph Meeker (Corporal Paris), all charged for cowardice in the face of the enemy.

In front of the camera, we see Kubrick throw in two of his stars from The Killing alongside (mostly) new faces. The most notable carry-overs are Timothy Carey and Joe Turkel, who play two of the convicted soldiers alongside Ralph Meeker, star of Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly. Other cast members, such as Adolphe Menjou and George Macready do very well in theirc respective parts. Macready is quite devilish in the role of General Mirau, who won't accept blame for his errounos and selfish judgement, even though he himself claimed the Ant Hill to be impregnable. Menjou on the other hand conveys a certain sense of charm, wisdom and warmth through his presence, but this proves to be even more dangerous as he is the true villain of the piece and possibly even more cynical than Colonel Dax. The big standout however is Douglas, who delivers what is possibly the best performance of his career. During that trench walk, he is able to convey the feeling that the audience is feeling at that very moment: this is doomed to fail, a lot of people are going to get killed, it's all hypocrisy, and this won't have a happy ending. Another fine example of his acting abilities can be found in the famous courtroom scene. I will try not to spoil too much, but the court turns out to be a farce, and Douglas conveys the pure rage and anger he's feeling at that moment at the general staff of the army in both his facial expressions and his closing statement.

From top to bottom: Adolphe Menjou (General Broulard) and George Macready (General Mireau), who serve as two evil sides of the same coin.

Kirk Douglas delivers a brilliant performance as the sympathetic and righteous Colonel Dax.

Ultimately, the film comes down to man's inhumanity towards man and how war merely serves as a justification for us to indulge in the barbaric and violent side to our nature. Institutions like the army simply uses words and phrases like "honor" and "bravery" like dress-up to justify their own brutality, when in a way, they're more brutal and unforgiving than the enemy the soldiers are supposed to be fighting. Let us not forget that these are the same men who forbade their troops from celebrating Christmas together with the enemy because it would be bad for "morale". All of these things would serve as a recurring theme in Kubrick's work, all the way up to Kubrick's later war film Full Metal Jacket.

Going back to the cinematography for a second, one can see Kubrick's fondness for one perspective shot compositions in several shots in the film, which one could attribute to reflecting the stern and cold precision of the military.

But despite the film containing this notion of brutality and cynicism aimed towards the military, Paths of Glory could be described as Kubrick's most emotional film. I don't know if it is, but it's certainly up there (incidentally I don't subscribe to the notion that Kubrick's later films were "cold" or "distant"). The ending however, might be the most emotional in any Kubrick film. I won't give away too much, but basically aa number of Dax' men are in a tavern, with a young captured German girl being forced to perform in front of them. At first the men are howling and whistling and are frankly acting like brutes. But as this frightened and innocent German girl starts to sing the song The Faithful Hussar, a tear comes out of her eye. Through this, the soldiers begin to show compassion and their humanity, and stop whistling and join in singing. This becomes a very moving scene and a perfect ending of the film. It's also a perfect use of music, which I mentioned earlier.

Christiane Kubrick (née Harlan) as the captured German girl immortalized in the film's final scene.

One quick thing before I conclude the review: the German girl singing at the end is played by Christiane Harlan. Kubrick and Christiane fell in love with each other, and Kubrick would divorce his second wife Ruth Sobotka in order to marry her. They would remain loyal, faithful and happily married to each other to the day Stanley died in 1999. The couple had three daughters; Katharina, Anya and Vivian.

From left to right: Christiane, Stanley and Kirk on the set.

Although Paths of Glory was not a success financially, it received rave reviews from critics. In later years, Paths of Glory is often seen as Kubrick's first milestone, and his first all-out masterpiece. I can't help but agree, and I think the film is a remarkable achievement and a simply brilliant film.

To be continued with: Spartacus (1960)

This article is dedicated to Stanley Kubrick, who was born on this day 91 years ago in The Bronx.