Kubrick's Masterpiece... and a Cautionary Tale for Today

Rating: 10/10 (14 March 2005)

PATHS OF GLORY is, without question, Kubricks GREATEST film, even tho it was one of his earliest. In it's way it ranks with CITIZEN KANE as a controversial and classic work of art... in addition to being a work from early on that the director had to live up to in subsequent work.
Controversy followed the film all through it's first release... it made a LOT of people in high places VERY uncomfortable. For a time, the film wasn't permitted to be shown in France, and it holds the dubious distinction of joining the ranks of a small number of other films that the Defense Department BANNED from being shown at US military base theaters.
The only other military theme films (tho not war films) so "honored" by the Pentagon that I know of are Rod Steiger's THE SERGEANT (which depicted Steiger as a homosexual noncommissioned officer), and Kirk Douglas' TOWN WITHOUT PITY (which tells the story of the court martial of four American occupation troops in Germany who are charged with the rape of a German teenager).
Were PATHS OF GLORY to be released today, it would probably STILL be banned from post movie houses; it asks far too many questions and reaches too many conclusions that make the military uncomfortable.
PATHS OF GLORY shows the results an ill conceived (and ultimately unsuccessful) attack, ordered by officers who are far more concerned with their own egos, images and reputations than they are with either the successful prosecution that attack or the wellbeing of the troops... whom they refer to an expendable herd of cattle... and who made the sacrifices in the costly battle.
SOMEONE must take public responsibility for the failure to take the objective, and if the officers take that responsibility, they reason that it will undermine the Nation's confidence in the competence of it's military leaders. The troops didn't succeed with the botched planning, so why not make the troops pay for the failure? Three soldiers are chosen by lot, for the most part at random, to be tried for cowardice and executed.
The court martial is rigged from the beginning... no record of the proceeding is kept, no admission of evidence of extenuating circumstance that favors the accused is permitted to be introduced, no testimony is permitted other than explanations of WHY the troops failed to successfully take the objective... and of that, nothing is permitted that casts a shadow on the leadership. The only permitted explanation in this "inquiry" is cowardice of the troops.
Overlying the entire farce is the scheming and maneuvering of officers to advance their own careers, while at the same time scrambling to cover their own asses and avoid responsibility for the battlefield fiasco.
Contemporary audiences can scarcely avoid seeing the parallels between the repercussions of the movie's ill fated assault on The Anthill and the Abu Gharib Prison scandals in Iraq; high ranking officers are walking away clean while troops are bearing the brunt of discipline for decisions that they may not have made.
Kirk Douglas plays Colonel Dax, the indignant field officer who defends the doomed troops, to perfection. His careful balancing of his sense of duty to his country with his sense of moral outrage over the travesty of the trial is magnificent.
Wayne Morris is notable as a weak, incompetent field officer who, much to our amazement, in the midst of battle raises a whining objection to the way Colonel Dax speaks to him as bullet whistle around them! The nonsequiter here is astonishing.
George McReidy and Adolph Mejou are sinisterly outstanding as the division's generals... men who can blandly refer to unjust court martials and subsequent executions as a "tonic" that benefits the "morale" of the entire division, men who can offhandedly comment that there is nothing more stimulating to troops than seeing someone else being shot, and men who are more than callously capable of calling in friendly artillery fire on their own troops in an attempt to force them to advance under impossible conditions. Their detachment from the realities of war, and from the humanity that they command as soldiers, is chilling.
Visually, the film is stunning at times, especially in the execution sequence. It is probably one of the best uses of black and white cinematography that has ever been produced.
PATHS OF GLORY is a film that examines what Firesign Theater called (with tongue planted firmly in cheek), the "Secret Code of Military Toughness". It leaves the audience angry and disturbed... as it SHOULD.