Kubrick is master of his craft, but the overall result is second-rate, especially by his standards

Rating: 7/10 (13 March 2002)

Spoilers below.
Apparently it was Kubrick who, during production, suggested sparing the lives of the three scapegoats, and Kirk Douglas who angrily vetoed the idea. You can see why in each case. Neither ending really works. There's no way of getting the men off that doesn't feel phoney - but how IS it to end? Three times in a row, that's how.
First, there's the execution. Horrific? Not really: we'd seen it coming, indeed we'd almost seen it HAPPEN, during earlier scenes which had implied it, in the courtroom and the prisoners' cell.
Then, there's the scene at the villa in which Dax lashes out at his superiors. British critic Robin Wood complained that this was just a cheap way of allowing audiences to vicariously "tell off" the bad guys. I'm loath to admit this, given that the claim was made in a poorly argued, spiteful and often embarrassingly foolish book about Alfred Hitchcock, but on this particular occasion, he has a point. It's a hollow climax. The fact that Dax's heatedness is partly due to guilt only makes the moment still less convincing. Oh well. Again there's the problem: what WOULD work? It's hard to say.
Finally, there's the coda, with the captured German girl singing for the French troops. Now THAT'S the real stuff. Nothing anywhere in the narrative prepares us for or plausibly leads into this scene, at once so delightful and so disturbing; if only Kubrick had been less single-minded, and allowed himself more moments like this earlier, we wouldn't feel so cheated when the film ends abruptly at this point, fading out just as it starts to get fired up. And indeed, all subsequent Kubrick films would be considerably longer than "Paths of Glory", and contain less padding. This would be the last occasion on which Kubrick had more technique than he new what to do with. That technique is already fully formed, in almost every frame from the opening tracking shot to the execution; one doesn't know whether to applaud the technique or lament the lack of overall effect.