Morality for simpletons

Rating: 1/10 (25 November 2009)

The b&w cinematography for Paths of Glory is very crisp, reflecting Kubrick's background as a magazine photographer, but I wish I'd never watched this. I admire some other Kubrick movies, but this movie suggests that the simplicity one observes here and in all subsequent Kubrick films, might just be shallowness; as it is here.
This script is dross, and hopelessly naff with its dumb sermon. The whole thing is overdetermined. What possible idea in it could a viewer disagree with? I felt like I was being led by the nose, because there isn't one syllable of ambiguity to be found in it; like a children's storybook. All you need is a morality detector with two settings, 'good person' and 'bad person.' George MacReady is over the top as a one-dimensional villain. One prisoner (Pierre) chews the scenery when offered a last drink; overacting at it's finest and pure hambone comedy. The extremely bad acting of the sobbing prisoner (Maurice) made my mouth hang open. The way his exit march is handled is utterly obtuse and unaffecting. Less important but odd, the attitude of the production has nothing in common with 1915. Never once does this feel like anything but 1957.
The ending in which an entire room full of soldiers all have an epiphany at the exact same moment is dramatic rubbish. Show me a room full of fifty men who all have the same emotional response to anything, and I'll show you a corny dramatic lie. Everything in this movie (and I mean everything) is amateurish except the cinematography.