Paths Of Glory DVD [1957]

Very gritty reality of war

A must have for every fan of Stanly Kubrick.. maybe the best role Kirk Douglas ever played!

One of my all time favourite Movies,this still packs a mighty punch 60 years after it's initial release.Kirk Douglas gives a memorable performance as Colonel Dax,a French army officer defending his men against Court Martial charges brought by the High Command to cover their own mistakes and set an example.the trial is a farce with the verdict already decided beforehand.Impressive directing from Stanley Kubrick ,making just his third film,also excellent performances from Gerard Mcready and Adolphe Menjou as the senior Commanders out to satisfy their lust for blood.This is really an anti-war film and was banned in France for over 20 years due to it's negative portrayal of the French Military .I purchased this Spanish Disc before the film was available on Blu-ray in the UK,the English Audio track is easy to find on the menu and the sound quality is excellent too.I never tire of watching this Movie and it's message still resonates powerfully all these years later.

Unarguably one of the finest anti-war diatribes ever to hit the screens. Yet, more than 50 years have passed after its making, it is still powerful and immortal film in its own league. Stanley Kubrick, even at the age of 28, showed that he would be the master of visual creation and ingenious camerawork. Apart from story, what I specially liked here is the trenches which are dark, foreboding and dreadfully real. Also, long close-ups, reverse tracking shots through the trences and lateral shots during attack scenes are absolutely brilliant, courtroom sequences harrowingly poignant.On first viewing "Paths of Glory" appears to be a corrosive anti-war movie about the brutal portrayal of military injustice; but it is far more complicated, delivering some universal social messages. In its very depths, the film is about strong class conflict, indomitability of human spirit, hypocrisy, and how the privilege class cares only about themselves and how their use of power could be so much corrupting. While enjoying the safety and luxury of their chateaux far off enemy lines and sipping their expensive wines, self-righteous as well as Machiavellian generals see no harm in sending their exhausted and underequipped albeit "expendable" soldiers in a suicide mission of taking an impregnable German position where nothing but death is awaiting. Yes, obey your master. Otherwise you'll taste the icy bullets of the firing squad. Yuck...Thankfully, Kirk Douglas' angry and mighty performance as Colonel Dax, who valiantly defends three French soldiers (who picked arbitrarily and charged unjustly with cowardice because they refused to run to imminent death) perfectly confronts this contradiction. This is one of his finest performances combining his aura of intellectuality and physicality with strong moral idealism.Last world: Despite having a pretty simple framework and short running time (~89 minutes), its powerful story, great performances, impeccable cinematography and Kubrick's deft directorial touch make "Paths of Glory" an universal and topical film even 50 years after its making.

A magnificent film revealing the hidden-from view history of misguided, premeditated, gruesome yet legalised slaughter during WWI. All those politically-inspired generals (on both sides) who, without regret, remorse or articulated thought, collectively authorised and promulgated the slaughter of human life within the water and rat-filled trenches and the kill-zone of no-man's land. Further, they did so without the least spark of genuine or humane interest in the real-life human carnage they were creating. And for what? Often, to simply advance a few hundred yards. Stanley Kubrick directs. Kirk Douglas stars & produces. The supporting cast are splendid as they create the very essence of the foolishness and hubris of many of the higher officers, mostly living out their war in a privileged and safely-miles-behind-the-lines position. All appear as realistically as they first did in Humphrey Cobb's novel; a book originally banned in France - as it came way too close to revealing the malevolent and pointless nature of what all the politically-inspired misfit leaders planned to do with their armies; that is to say, to send millions of ordinary enlisted men and junior officers to their certain deaths. It's now exactly 100 years since The Somme and Verdun during 1916 bled the British, British Imperial, French and German nations halfway to death. The hypocrisy of assembling a kangaroo military court to visit ludicrous charges of cowardice, accompanied by the certain verdict of the death sentence, upon randomly-selected soldiers who had failed to 'take an objective,' is bitter to watch, even now. A timeless masterpiece from Kubrick and a timeless lesson for all that demonstrates the overwhelmingly pyrrhic 'victories' of WWI. A must-have for your collection. I thoroughly recommend this film classic.