One to Remember

Rating: 10/10 (7 March 2006)

This film is a treasure. I first saw it in the local movie house in Ashland, Oregon, in my second season with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The theater owner screened it for one night only, I believe, as an "art film" that might appeal to a small off-beat crowd. The whole Shakespeare company showed up, and we were enthralled by the acting and stunned and moved by Kubrick's lean, masterful story of an historical cover-up perpetrated by autocratic generals in collusion with lower-ranking opportunists and cowards. Based on a blatant miscarriage of justice in the French army of World War I, the film had a powerful impact on our generation--in the post-Korea, pre-Vietnam era. It is a classic indictment of the corruption of men in war. I believe it holds up very well and that no one who sees it at the right time of their life will ever forget it.