Product Description

Safe in their picturesque chateau behind the front lines, the French general staff passes down a direct order to Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas): take the Ant Hill at any cost. A blatant suicide mission, the attack is doomed to failure. Covering up their fatal blunder, the generals order the arrest of three innocent soldiers, charging them with cowardice and mutiny. Dax, a lawyer in civilian life, rises to the men's defense but soon realizes that, unless he can prove that the generals were to blame,nothing less than a miracle will save his clients from the firing squad. A compelling masterpiece from world-class director/writer Stanley Kubrick and screenwriters Calder Willingham and JimThompson, Paths of Glory is a blistering indictment of military politics and "an unforgettable movie experience" (Newsweek).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2895 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-06-29
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 87 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Stanley Kubrick had already made his talent known with the outstanding racetrack heist thriller The Killing, but it was the 1957 antiwar masterpiece Paths of Glory that catapulted Kubrick to international acclaim. Based on the novel by Humphrey Cobb, the film was initiated by Kirk Douglas, who chose the young Kubrick to direct what would become one of the most powerful films about the wasteful insanity of warfare. In one of his finest roles, Douglas plays Colonel Dax, commander of a battle-worn regiment of the French army along the western front during World War I. Held in their trenches under the threat of German artillery, the regiment is ordered on a suicidal mission to capture an enemy stronghold. When the mission inevitably fails, French generals order the selection of three soldiers to be tried and executed on the charge of cowardice. Dax is appointed as defense attorney for the chosen scapegoats, and what follows is a travesty of justice that has remained relevant and powerful for decades. In the wake of some of the most authentic and devastating battle sequences ever filmed, Kubrick brilliantly explores the political machinations and selfish personal ambitions that result in battlefield slaughter and senseless executions. The film is unflinching in its condemnation of war and the self-indulgence of military leaders who orchestrate the deaths of thousands from the comfort of their luxurious headquarters. For many years, Paths of Glory was banned in France as a slanderous attack on French honor, but it's clear that Kubrick's intense drama is aimed at all nations and all men. Though it touches on themes of courage and loyalty in the context of warfare, the film is specifically about the historical realities of World War I, but its impact and artistic achievement remain timeless and universal. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Adolphe Menjou, George Macready, Timothy Carey--all turn in excellent performances
The film itself, however, should have been better and left the viewer with a far more powerful impact--considering the subject matter.
We have seen this type of subject matter handled much better by other directors.

To me, this is really further proof that Kubrick was/is vastly overrated.

Stanley Kubrick is King
This superb anti-war film, reminds me of an old quote that said, "The men who say 'we must go to war,' will never be the same men who fight them." And this film, it is not a critique of any one government, but of the government and war altogether. It is in this nature that Path of Glory reveals itself to be one of the greatest anti-war films of the century, a film that should be mandatory for every person who thinks war is a great first option to view, before they start their marches against these, "Stupid Hippies."

Kubrick's Searing Indictment of Military Politics Still Startles and Resonates
There have been many exceptional anti-war films throughout the years - Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front, Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima - but I doubt if there's been one as emotionally devastating and economically dramatized as Stanley Kubrick's searing 1957 classic indictment of military politics among the upper ranks of the French army during WWI. Running a scant 86 minutes, the movie wastes no time in showing the exploitation of military ranks by the French General Staff to participate in a suicide mission on the western front. The objective is to take over "Ant Hill", a German stronghold of no strategic importance to the French except to the ambitious General Mireau, who is given the incentive of a promotion if the attack is successful. It's oblivious from the outset that the chances of success are practically nil since the men in the trenches are battered and weak from a number of successful advancements into enemy territory. The conscientious Colonel Dax is handed the responsibility of leading the men, but it turns completely fatal due initially to the blunder of one commanding officer's orders and the dominant German forces. Desperate to avoid humiliation, Mireau transfers blame for the failure to the soldiers and accuses them of cowardice.

If Mireau had his way, one hundred men would have been publicly executed, but he is ordered to identify three men to be to be executed exemplarily to satisfy the blood thirst of the military command. Dax defends the three men at the court-martial hearing but appears doomed to failure by a kangaroo court. The rest of the story plays out in aching detail until the shattering conclusion. Although he is more famous for his larger-than-life portrayals like Vincent Van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life and the title role in Kubrick's later Spartacus, Kirk Douglas is no less mesmerizing in a comparatively subdued performance as Dax. In hindsight, it seems rather punitive that he never won a competitive Oscar. In a particularly poignant performance, Ralph Meeker, an even more undervalued actor most famous for Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, plays Corporal Paris, one of the three chosen to die specifically because his commanding officer wants to be rid of the only eyewitness to his act of drunken cowardice. With his distinctive facial scar, George Macready plays the fanatical Mireau with uncompromising fury, while Adolphe Menjou, in one of the last roles of a long career, plays the blatantly immoral General Broulard with a slyly sinister panache. It's no wonder the film was banned in France for nearly two decades. The 1999 DVD offers only the original theatrical trailer as an extra. Well beyond Kubrick aficionados, this remains essential viewing for anyone interested in classic cinema.