Kubrick's Influence Part III

Rating: Null/10 (14 November 2001)

Paths of Glory is Kubrick's third "official" movie (his first two "unofficial works," Day of the Fight and Fear and Desire are sadly unavailable on video or DVD), and it is one of the greatest war movies I've ever seen. Later movies, such as Saving Private Ryan, The Deer Hunter and Kubrick's own Full Metal Jacket, are regarded as being "anti-war" movies, while Paths of Glory is a full-blooded war movie, as we don't see how the war affects the outside lives of the protagonists. The film is a heartbreaking account of the hypocrisies that exist in any war, and the fact that the American actors are playing French soldiers really doesn't matter (Kubrick did not allow his actors to sport fake French accents, and thank God for that). Kirk Douglas gives one of his great performances in a rare (for Kubrick) sympathetic hero role. As the three doomed soldiers, Timothy Carey (who played a hateful criminal in "The Killing") and Joseph Turkel (who would later show up in The Shining as Lloyd the bartender) are especially memorable, each displaying a different set of emotions (sorrow or anger) when they realize their hopeless fates. And the film's climactic bar room sequence manages to be chilling and very sad at the same time. An absolute must-see.