The paths of glory lead but to the grave

Rating: 9/10 (31 October 2017)

In 1916 a French regiment is ordered to attack "the Anthill", a strongly fortified German position. The attack proves a disastrous failure; the French suffer heavy casualties and none of their soldiers succeed in reaching the German trenches. When a second wave of troops refuse to attack, their commanding officer General Mireau desperately orders his artillery to open fire on them to force them onto the battlefield. The artillery commander, however, refuses to do so without a written order. To try and deflect blame from himself for the failure of the offensive, Mireau orders three soldiers from the regiment, chosen at random, to be tried for cowardice. The task of defending the accused falls to Mireau's subordinate Colonel Dax, a lawyer in civilian life.
The film was controversial when it was first released in 1957; it was banned in France, where it was regarded as a slur on the honour of the French Army, until 1975. It was also banned for a time in Switzerland and Franco's Spain and (remarkably) in West Germany. Films with a strongly anti-war theme were perhaps unusual in the fifties, a period during which American (and British) war films were mostly set in World War II and were generally patriotic in tone, with war shown as something heroic. World War I, which could not so easily be turned into a glorious fight for freedom, was largely ignored.
"Paths of Glory", however, was based on a novel by Humphrey Cobb which had been written in the very different political climate of 1935, when following the slaughter of 1914-18 pacifism was more in fashion. At first sight, Cobb's title looks deliberately ironic because he depicts war as something far from glorious. To those who recognise its source, however, it appears not so much ironic as grimly appropriate. It comes from Thomas Gray's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", and what Gray wrote was "The paths of glory lead but to the grave".
The film makes its case against war in two ways. The first is by emphasising the futility of war. The only German we see is a female civilian captured by the French; no German soldiers appear at all. I think that this was a deliberate decision by director Stanley Kubrick; the French soldiers seem to be fighting not against men like themselves but against some nameless, invisible and inexorable force of nature, able to cut them down at will. They appear to have no more chance of capturing the Anthill than they would of capturing the moon.
The second way in which Kubrick makes his case is by emphasising the gulf between the generals and the man under their command. This is not just a difference in social class- indeed, this element is not emphasised as much as it is in some British productions about the war. It is more a gulf in the way in which they experience the war. The general staff, safe in their chateaux away from the lines, have no real idea of the hardships and dangers confronting those under their command.
Moreover, the generals do not even seem to be motivated by patriotism or a belief in the rightness of their cause. They are much more concerned about self-advancement and their own brand of office politics. When Mireau is first ordered to take the Anthill he demurs, believing that the objective can only be attained, if at all, at an unacceptable cost in French lives. It is only when his superior, General Broulard, intimates that a successful attack might be rewarded with a promotion that he changes his mind. When Dax complains about Mireau's behaviour, Broulard assumes that this is all part of a ploy to obtain Mireau's job; it never occurs to him that Dax might be sincere about trying to save the lives of three unjustly accused men.
This was not the first film to be directed by Kubrick, but it was perhaps the first to bring him to public notice. The battle scenes are well done, even if they lack the realism of more modern war films such as "Saving Private Ryan" or the recent "Dunkirk". The trial scenes, during which it becomes increasingly uncertain as to whether Dax, for all his forensic skills, will be able to save the three accused. Kirk Douglas is excellent as Dax, a sane and humane man in an insane and inhumane world, and he receives good support from the rest of the cast. Particularly good is George Macready as General Mireau, a man driven literally mad by unbridled ambition to the point where he is prepared to sacrifice hundreds of lives, not for the honour and glory of France but for the honour and glory of General Mireau.
The film is perhaps less well-known today than some of Kubrick's later efforts, but I would regard it as his first masterpiece, equal or superior in quality to virtually anything in his later work, including his two later anti-war films, "Dr Strangelove" and "Full Metal Jacket". Douglas was also to collaborate with Kubrick in his second great masterpiece, "Spartacus". 9/10