Paths of Glory

After directing The Killing (1956) for MGM, a low-budget film which nonetheless barely broke even, Kubrick developed a script in collaboration with Calder Willingham under the supervision of Dore Schary, then head of production: The Burning Secret, based on a short story by Stefan Zweig. After Schary's departure, Kubrick and Willingham abandoned the project and turned to the novel Paths of Glory by Humphrey Cobb, a work which Kubrick had admired for years. Although sometimes characterized as a true story, it is instead a fictional account inspired loosely by true events. Cobb's sole novel, its influence can be seen in later war-themed works such as William Faulkner's A Fable and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead.

Kirk Douglas, who had formed his own production company, Bryna productions, took an interest in the project after seeing The Killing. It was only his star power that helped push it through at United Artists. Douglas writes in his 1988 autobiography The Ragman's Son: "I trapped them into doing it, by saying I had a deal with MGM, and if they didn't want to make the movie, to let me know immediately." The budget was set at $900,000, with $350,000 set aside for Douglas' fee as the lead actor. Thanks to careful planning and the relatively low production costs of shooting overseas, the film looks much more expensive than it actually was." Commenting on Kubrick's legendary ego, Douglas writes, "...wherever we went, Stanley made sure they stuck signs saying HARRIS-KUBRICK all around like FOR RENT signs. I was tempted to say, Get rid of all those signs and put up a sign that says BRYNA....It amused me that he was so anxious about the HARRIS-KUBRICK signs. I'm just surprised that he didn't want the signs to say just KUBRICK." However, Douglas respected Kubrick enough to have him hired a few years later as the director of Spartacus (1960), replacing Anthony Mann.

Paths of Glory was shot entirely in Germany in the run-down Geiselgasteig Studios outside of Munich, using a nearby field for the battle scene and a chateau for the headquarters of the commanding officers. A realistic battlefield was constructed, wired with explosives and strewn with craters, debris, muddy gullies, barbed wire, and of course trenches. The trenches themselves were made some six feet wide - in World War I trenches were actually about four feet wide - in order to accommodate the camera for the film's legendary tracking shots in "the Anthill" attack sequence. Kubrick says in Alexander Walker's book Stanley Kubrick Directs: "For this sequence, we had six cameras, one behind the other on a long dolly track which ran parallel to the attack. The battlefield was divided into five 'dying zones' and each extra was given a number ranging from one to five and told to 'die' in that zone, if possible near an explosion."

For many years Paths of Glory was banned in France and Switzerland due to its supposed anti-French sentiment. When the film was selected for the 1958 Berlin Film Festival, the French threatened to withdraw altogether if the film was shown there. It was also banned on American military bases because of its anti-military theme. It was, however, admired by Winston Churchill for the realism of its battle scenes. Although lauded by critics as one of the great war films, its box-office receipts were disappointing, due in part to the harsh subject matter and the above-mentioned restrictions in the international marketplace. But, on a personal level, Paths of Glory was particularly rewarding for Kubrick because it was on the set that he met his future wife, Susanne Christian, who closes the film with her moving rendition of a German song.

by Scott McGee & James Steffen

Paths of Glory has often been compared to director Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western (1930), another literary adaptation that condemned war yet aroused compassion for the men in the trenches. Made when sound equipment was still cumbersome and unwieldy, Lewis Milestone's film broke expectations with an extremely mobile camera, employing many startling tracking shots across "No Man's Land", a technique that Stanley Kubrick adapted and refined in Paths of Glory.

Paths of Glory is an important work in Stanley Kubrick's career. The work shows traces of such formative influences as Max Ophuls, famous for lengthy dolly shots, and Sergei Eisenstein, for his influential dialectical editing and formal framings - all techniques that Kubrick adopted for Paths of Glory and for each of his successive films. Kubrick paid homage to Ophuls throughout Paths of Glory, particularly during the shooting of the scene when Broulard and Mireau first meet. The two men enjoy the luxuries of their rank while wandering around Mireau's salon. Kubrick, who shot much of the film himself, composed this sequence in a series of tracks, following them as they weave around columns, pause at priceless tables for a whiff of cognac, and so on. Kubrick decided to film this sequence midway into the production, so naturally the crew was puzzled about its inclusion. Only at the end of the day's shooting did he whisper to supporting actor Richard Anderson, "Max Ophuls died today. This shot is in his honor."

In 1958, Stanley Kubrick spoke at length about the soldier's experience, as depicted in Paths of Glory: "The soldier is absorbing because all the circumstances surrounding him have a kind of charged hysteria. For all its horror, war is pure drama, probably because it is one of the few remaining situations where men stand up for and speak up for what they believe to be their principles."

by Scott McGee

Paths of Glory, despite its impressive production design and battlefield pyrotechnics, cost only $900,000, a third of which went to star Kirk Douglas. However, Kubrick's later collaboration with Douglas on Spartacus (1960) cost $10 million.

George Macready, playing the nefarious General Mireau, was considered the villain par excellence for much of his career. He made his Broadway debut in 1926, portraying the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. His many other screen credits include Rita Hayworth's reptilian husband in Gilda (1946). The scar that he sports in Paths of Glory was genuine, incurred in a car accident. Off screen, Macready was one of Hollywood's most cultivated citizens, having owned a Los Angeles art gallery with another Hollywood heavy, Mr. Vincent Price.

Wayne Morris, as Lt. Roget, was an actual war veteran, having earned four Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Air Medals as a Navy aviator in World War II. He was credited with shooting down seven Japanese aircraft in aerial dogfights and with sinking an enemy gunboat and two destroyers. Roget died of a heart attack in 1959 at age 45 while watching aerial maneuvers aboard an aircraft carrier.

You may need to flex that bionic muscle between your ears to remember where you have seen the actor playing Major Saint-Auben. Richard Anderson played government official Oscar Goldman on the TV series, The Six Million Dollar Man (1974-78). Anderson, one of producer James B. Harris' tennis companions, was hired originally to only coach the cast of Paths of Glory, but he was eventually given a strong supporting part as well. Some of Anderson's other film acting credits include Twelve O'Clock High (1949), Forbidden Planet (1956), The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and Seven Days in May (1964).

Sidney Howard, who was the main contributor to the screenplay of Gone With the Wind (1939), adapted the novel Paths of Glory for the stage. The theatre version ran briefly on Broadway at the end of 1935, but it was not a success. Nevertheless, theatre critic Brooks Anderson did offer this bit of prescient insight when he wrote in The New York Times, "Some day the screen will seize this ghastly tale and make a work of art from it."

by Scott McGee

Famous Quotes from PATHS OF GLORY (1957)

General Broulard: Colonel Dax, you're a disappointment to me. You've spoiled the keenness of your mind by wallowing in sentimentality. You really did want to save those men, and you were not angling for Mireau's command. You are an idealist -- and I pity you as I would the village idiot. We're fighting a war, Dax, a war that we've got to win. Those men didn't fight, so they were shot. You bring charges against General Mireau, so I insist that he answer them. Wherein have I done wrong?
Colonel Dax: Because you don't know the answer to that question, I pity you.

(The condemned men are awaiting execution.)
Corporal Paris: See that cockroach? Tomorrow morning, we'll be dead and it'll be alive. It'll have more contact with my wife and child than I will. I'll be nothing, and it'll be alive.
(Ferol smashes the roach.)
Private Ferol: Now you got the edge on him.

General Broulard: Colonel Dax! You will apologize at once or I shall have you placed under arrest!
Colonel Dax: I apologize... for not being entirely honest with you. I apologize for not revealing my true feelings. I apologize, sir, for not telling you sooner that you're a degenerate, sadistic old man. And you can go to hell before I apologize to you now or ever again!

Cobb's novel was based on a 1934 New York Times report of a trial just concluded in France. The families of five French enlisted men, shot for mutiny in 1915, had sued the army for damages. The court agreed that they were unfairly executed, but awarded two of the families with one token franc each. The other families got nothing. Cobb was so livid over this injustice that he wrote a short novel based loosely on the incident. The book had no title when Cobb finished it, so the American publisher held a contest offering a cash prize for the winning title. The winner suggested a line from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:" "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." Paths of Glory arrived in bookstores in the summer of 1935.

By the time Kubrick and Harris got their hands on Paths of Glory, Humphrey Cobb was dead, but his widow was more than willing to sell them the movie rights for $10,000. Although the producing pair had no script, they took the project to MGM chief Dore Schary, who promptly told them to forget it. Schary just lost his shirt producing a Civil War epic for MGM - The Red Badge of Courage (1951) - and he was not about to sink more of MGM's cash into another potential debacle. Despite the MGM setback, the duo decided to commission a screenplay from pulp fiction writer Jim Thompson. His version was later reworked by noted author Calder Willingham, who had been working on another Kubrick-Harris project entitled The Burning Secret until that project was dropped and he was brought aboard Paths of Glory.

While a final script was being developed, Kubrick and Harris approached a few of Hollywood's top actors to play Dax, including James Mason and Richard Burton. Agents of a few top actors refused to even show such a depressing and non-commercial project as Paths of Glory to their clients. Still, one actor with a lot of Hollywood clout became very much interested in the project - Gregory Peck. The producers were excited at the prospect of casting the reputable actor, but Peck was unavailable for the next 18 months. Meanwhile, Kirk Douglas expressed an interest in the script and made an offer that the producers could not turn down. Plus, United Artists agreed to finance the picture since the very-bankable Douglas was interested. After Peck caught wind of the imminent deal between Kubrick-Harris and Kirk Douglas, he quickly called them to say that he had reassessed his priorities for the next year and that he was available to play Dax. But by that time, a stringent and ironclad deal between Kubrick-Harris and Douglas was set.

At Stanley Kubrick's urging, Jim Thompson added a happy ending to the first draft of the Paths of Glory screenplay. Incensed at the happy ending, Kirk Douglas asked if Kubrick dared authorize such a change, and if so, why. Kubrick agreed to the happy ending and had apparently wanted it to make the film more publicly appealing, thus increasing its box office take. In the end, the filmmakers decided to stick close to the original novel's ending. The film's screenwriting credit would finally be attributed to Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham, and Jim Thompson.

by Scott McGee

Bryna, Kirk Douglas' production company, hired dozens of German workers to alter several acres into the vast hell of "No Man's Land." They did so by gouging out the crater holes, digging huge ruts and gullies, filling some with water, covering the area with a tangled spider's web of prickly barbed wire, and then planting hundreds of explosives throughout that were to be detonated during the initial attack.

After the workmen had finished dressing the battlefield set, the Paths of Glory production still needed local assistance and manpower: six hundred German policemen were hired as extras to play the French troops, while six cameras tracked the attack, recording their "deaths." Each one of the extras, many of whom had fathers that served in the Great War, were assigned "dying zones," the exact locations in the battle area where they were to fall dead by machine gun bullets, artillery shrapnel, or other horrendous demises. Kubrick had a bit of a problem though; he had to keep reminding the policemen, who had three years military training, that they were supposed to act fearful on the battlefield. Only after Kubrick's repeated directions did the extras get the idea of acting scared. Moreover, they stopped performing foolish feats of physical courage such as leaping in and out of foxholes that were lined with explosives and were capable of inflicting severe burns.

Stanley Kubrick also had trouble getting one of his stock players to take direction. The eccentric character actor, Timothy Carey, who had played the sicko racehorse assassin in Kubrick's The Killing (1956), was cast as one of the condemned soldiers. For his last meal of roast duck, Carey could never remember to tear into it the same way for repeated takes, so every take required a new, unmolested duck. Kirk Douglas was irritated by Carey's erratic acting, and made his impressions known, loudly. But Kubrick seemed to have enjoyed getting Douglas riled up. During the court-martial scene, when Douglas was criticizing Carey's delivery, Kubrick whispered to Carey, "Make this a good one, because Kirk doesn't like it."

Stanley Kubrick met his third wife Christiane Harlan while filming Paths of Glory in Germany. Near the close of the film, Harlan plays the timid girl in the cafe who sings for the soldiers (she was the only German character actually seen in the picture). James B. Harris was alarmed that Kubrick put his own girlfriend on the payroll, as well as by the fact that she was related to Nazi filmmaker Veit Harlan, director of the notorious Jud Süss (1940). Christiane and Stanley were married until his death in 1999. Of course, Kubrick's first two wives were involved in his earlier films. His first wife, Toba Etta Metz Kubrick, was the dialogue director for Stanley's first feature film Fear And Desire (1953). His second wife, Ruth Sobotka Kubrick, was in Killer's Kiss (1955) as a ballet dancer named Iris in a short sequence for which she also did the choreography.

Both Stanley Kubrick and star/producer Kirk Douglas knew that Paths of Glory was bound to be a hard sell at the box office. Despite the minor box office take, Douglas still pocketed a salary that was roughly equal to a third of the film's total budget, which came to about $1 million. Kubrick, meanwhile, worked for a percentage of the profits, but received no salary.

by Scott McGee

Stanley Kubrick managed his career brilliantly. Many film directors opted for the security of studio contracts or retreated to television when feature work dried up. Others like Sam Peckinpah fought with their producers and were fired from their own films. Kubrick stayed independent and kept his focus on the long goal. Kirk Douglas claimed a third of Paths of Glory's budget as his salary, and Kubrick was practically working for free. Rather than swim upstream, the director gave Douglas what he wanted -- big Oscar-bait dramatic scenes -- and concentrated on the daunting challenge of making an intelligent anti-war film.

The 1950s didn't really produce anti-war films as we now define them. War was Hell but it also delivered exciting entertainment, hopefully with a little sex to attract female audiences. Robert Aldrich's Attack! promised a raw indictment of a corrupt and cowardly chain of command, but finished up applauding the U.S. Army as a self-healing institution. Paths of Glory makes a searing statement about the callous inhumanity of World War 1, where millions of men were killed in suicidal charges against machine guns. Kubrick directs for maximum intellectual outrage at the plight of soldiers betrayed by a decadent and cynical officer corps.

A lawyer in civilian life, Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) accepts orders to take an enemy position called The Anthill. On a reconnaissance patrol, the cowardly Lt. Roget (Wayne Morris) panics and kills one of his own men. He silences the only witness, Corporal Paris (Ralph Meeker) by pulling rank -- the enlisted man's word will never be accepted over his. The utterly unprincipled General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) orders the incompetent, arrogant General Mireau (George Macready) to take The Anthill at all costs. The attack fails, after many of Colonel Dax's men are killed in a pointless frontal assault. Seeing that some soldiers never left the trenches, Mireau directs his own artillery to fire on them, but his orders are refused. To save face and "teach his men a lesson", the petulant Mireau demands that executions be carried out. The number of men to be shot is narrowed to just three, to be chosen by the trench officers. One victim is selected by lot and another is singled out because he's unpopular. Lt. Roget chooses the third to die: Corporal Paris, the witness to Roget's cowardice.

Colonel Dax defends the three in the court-martial, despite the fact that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. General Mireau has equated his personal pride with the honor of the army. General Broulard sees the entire issue in political terms, and coldly assumes that Dax's spirited defense is a maneuver for personal advancement. But Broulard also lays a trap for Mireau ... as Dax has documented the General's attempt to fire on his own troops.

Paths of Glory is a superb film about the failure of human effort and institutions. The theme is consistent in Stanley Kubrick's work, from the robbers of The Killing to the spacemen in 2001 betrayed by their own computer. On a meager budget, Kubrick constructs an impressive, gritty battle scene that holds its own against the benchmark set by Lewis Milestone's classic All Quiet on the Western Front. Making good use of his photographic skills, Kubrick's vision of trench warfare resembles authentic photographs. The troops suffer and die in filthy conditions while the generals meet for lunch in regal chateaus. The ancient palaces are as much of a holdover from the decadent past as the antiquated military system itself.

The taut screenplay deals almost exclusively in irony. Screenwriters Kubrick, Calder Willingham and pulp crime novelist Jim Thompson place the blame squarely on a grossly corrupt military command structure. General Mireau reserves the right to kill his own men because they aren't sufficiently willing to commit suicide. Loyal soldiers are used first as cannon fodder and then as scapegoats for the failed trench war. One of the men to be executed "for cowardice" is offered a blindfold by the very man that has condemned him to cover up his own cowardice. Another (Joe Turkel) is so sick that he must be awakened for his own execution. The killing is staged as a formal ritual, to proclaim its legitimacy. General Mireau considers the spectacle his personal vindication: "My men did die well, didn't they?"

Thanks to Kubrick's masterful direction -- he refrains from overstating emotions already present in the material -- Paths of Glory is a devastating experience. We admire Cpl. Paris' calm acceptance of his fate -- the man has too much dignity to indulge in a pointless protest against the inevitable. The uncontrollable actor Timothy Carey wouldn't take direction and had to be fired from the film. He ends up as one of its most memorable assets, wailing and crying as he's led to the firing squad. Several key scenes take place between the generals as they discuss murdering their own men over a light meal. Kubrick's "cold" observance of their political games displays their vain posturing for exactly what it is.

Kubrick also fulfills his mission to make Paths of Glory a vanity showcase for Kirk Douglas. Col. Dax hasn't got all that much to do with the story, as his legal defense of the three condemned men is little more than a noble gesture. But Douglas is in there sticking his chin out, heroically leading his troops on a charge through no-man's land. We also see Dax looking good without a shirt as he washes up. Dax's real function is to serve as a sounding board for the power games between Broulard and Mireau and to provide an identification figure for the audience, someone that can see through these high-ranking villains. When Col. Dax speaks up, however, the movie takes a quick plunge into socially conscious preaching. Kirk Douglas rails against injustice with all of his might. When the axe has fallen, he Stands Right Up and tells off the bad guys in no uncertain terms. If only history had more Colonel Daxes around when Galileo and Joan of Arc were on trial. These Big Scenes for the producer-star are also a sop to the audience: Don't worry, everybody may die but a noble hero will be there to make a fine speech.

If not for Kubrick's superior direction, Paths of Glory might very well resemble a social pleading film by that other Stanley, Stanley Kramer. The producers risk little by protesting the injustice of a war already a half-century in the past. Since the story takes place in the French Army, the film isn't going to offend the Pentagon. The Production Code had nothing to complain about, as the combat isn't shown to gory excess and a soulful priest (Emile Meyer) is close at hand. The greater anti-war message remains abstract. Nothing here suggests that the film's moral outrage is applicable to present-day militarism.

Audiences have always liked Kirk Douglas's grandstanding, as Col. Dax provides a handy outlet for our built-up rage. Mireau and Broulard's intolerable behavior cues cheers for Kirk's tirade, even when the actor performs his signature cracked-voice bit. But Kubrick immediately reclaims authorship of the film by following this scene with a surprise finish from left field. Like a leftover bit from Jean Renioir's Grand Illusion, we see a captured German girl (Suzanne Christian) goaded into singing for the troops. The soldiers' hoots and catcalls turn to tears as she sings a heartbreaking tune. Douglas's contribution to this scene is limited to a pair of brief cutaways. He's still the star, but the movie belongs to Stanley Kubrick.

Criterion's Blu-ray of Paths of Glory restores the graphic power of the film's B&W imagery. Whether cruising through endless muddy trenches or regarding a 17th-century chateau with thirty-foot ceilings, Kubrick's visual control is complete. B&W on standard video just doesn't look this good, and the old MGM disc was a bit pale as well as given a full-frame transfer. Criterion's 1:66 matting frames the careful compositions precisely and restores the intimacy of close-ups.

Disc producer Curtis Tsui's extras present a wealth of critical thought, even for viewers already familiar with the film. Gary Giddins' audio commentary discusses the production and its personalities in full detail. The movie was banned in France for a time, as can be easily understood. Kubrick is heard in a 1966 audio interview and Kirk Douglas talks about the picture in a 1979 television appearance. In Criterion's new interviews, producer Jan Harlan presents his impression of Stanley Kubrick, while Paths of Glory's refreshingly outspoken co-producer James B. Harris recounts the film's behind-the-scenes politics. Kubrick's widow Christiane recounts her experience being hired to act in the film while offering her own unique perspective on the director. A trailer is included, and the insert booklet contains a thorough essay by James Naremore.

Of special interest is a French TV documentary on the legacy of the real-life WW1 incident that inspired the Humphrey Cobb book on which Paths of Glory is based. The descendants of the unjustly executed soldiers lobbied for decades to restore their honor. As it turns out, one of the historical victims was singled out because the first randomly chosen loser happened to be Jewish. After the scandal of the Dreyfus affair, political considerations intervened to force a second choice. That fact would seem to endorse Stanley Kubrick's ironic stance as totally in keeping with historical truth.

For more information about Paths of Glory, visit The Criterion Collection. To order Paths of Glory, go to TCM Shopping.

by Glenn Erickson

Paths of Glory was a controversial release in Europe and the United States. It was banned in France for 20 years because the French felt it was a slander against the honor of their country and the men who fought and died in World War I. The French even threatened the filmmakers with criminal charges of libel. They were particularly miffed that the patriotic "Marseillaise" played over the credits. Austria put a disclaimer on the film that stated it represented an isolated incident and did not represent the "vast majority of French soldiers." The movie was even banned on some American military bases in Europe. But in Italy, Paths of Glory was lauded as the best international film of the year. The flick also won admiration from several key figures, notably Sir Winston Churchill, who thought the battle scenes were as authentic as any he had ever seen.

Hollis Alpert of the Saturday Review said it was "unquestionably the finest American film of the year. It is so searing in its intensity that it will probably take its place, in years to come, as one of the screen's most extraordinary achievements."

Variety praised Paths of Glory as "starkly realistic," but then gave it a one-two punch by labeling it "dated" and "grim screen fare." The critic was prescient though when he said the box office take would be "spotty at best."

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote of Paths of Glory as having "an impact of hard reality...a frank avowal of agonizing, uncompensated injustice that is pursued to the bitter, tragic end." But Crowther summed up his review with a rather ambiguous impression: "It is grotesque, appalling, nauseating...but so framed and isolated that...you are left with the feeling that you have been witness to nothing more than a horribly freakish incident."

Similarly, The New York Herald called Paths of Glory "a good hard movie...powerful in design and execution," but that "you may not believe that two such evil men could wield this power, or that French military justice could be so polluted. In this case, Paths of Glory will strike you as a narrow and unlikely drama."

Influential film critic Stanley Kauffman later wrote, "The script of Paths of Glory had all the simplistic and banal anti-war propaganda that Dr. Strangelove (1964) transcends, but it was executed with ruthless, vivid immediacy."

Screen veteran Adolphe Menjou (General Broulard) said of Stanley Kubrick at the time of release: "The greatest director was Chaplin. Stanley works more like him than anybody I've ever seen...in that the actor is always right and the director always wrong...He'll be one of the ten best directors."

by Scott McGee