348 - Paths of Glory, United States, 1957. Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Thursday, December 13, 2017

348 - Paths of Glory, United States, 1957.  Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. - Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

You can be saved.

Saved?  I'll be saved?

Father Dupree is giving comfort to Private Pierre Arnaud.  He is here to administer Last Rites.  Arnaud is having a hard time being comforted.  He is about to die tomorrow.  Shot by a firing squad.  Made up of his own men.  Because he was court-martialed.  The charge: Cowardice in the Face of the Enemy.  How did Arnaud show cowardice?  He did not.  He has been awarded twice for valor.  Why was he court-martialed?  He was chosen by lot.  At random.

Arnaud is not alone.  Two other men stand charged with him.

Private Maurice Ferol.  Who was chosen because he lacks social skills.

And Corporal Philippe Paris.  Why him?  Because his superior officer, Lieutenant Roget, is covering himself.  Roget, who drinks on the job, took Paris and another man, a scout, out into No Man's Land on a scouting mission.  Roget sent the scout ahead of them alone.  Paris noted that they should stay together, but Roget was visibly afraid.  He did not want to go any further.  In fact, he decided to return before the scout came back.  So he threw a grenade in the general direction and cut and ran, leaving even Paris.  Paris went forward and found the scout's body.  Killed by Roget's grenade.  When Paris returned to the trench, Roget was shocked to see him.  Roget, while drinking, had already started writing his report, which was going to state that both men, the scout and Paris, had died.

Lieutenant Roget's cowardice is stunning.  So is his gall.

When Roget is asked to select a man from his company to send up for court-martial, he selects Paris.  The brave Paris.  To be court-martialed.  With the sentence to be death by firing squad.  Roget is already responsible for the scout's death.  Now he will be responsible for Paris' death.

Paths of Glory appears to be a war film but shifts rather quickly into a political drama set during wartime.

It is the French military.  It is during World War 1.  The American actors are using their own accents so that they do not sound like fake French accents.

Kirk Douglas stands strong as the stolid and moral Colonel Dax.

Ralph Meeker plays the doomed Corporal Paris.

We saw Ralph Meeker back in January in the film Kiss Me Deadly (1955).  He seems older there than he does here.  Yet this film was made two years later.

          028 - Kiss Me Deadly, United States, 1955.  Dir. Robert Aldrich.
          http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/028-kiss-me-deadly-1955-united-states.html

Adolphe Menjou plays General George Broulard, the top general, the one with the power to grant power, the one who can give the promotion which starts the chain in motion.  He lives in a chateau.  He hosts balls.  He believes he is above all of this.

George Macready plays the smarmy General Paul Mireau.  We just saw him as Ballin Mundson, Gilda's husband in Gilda (1946)!  A film he made eleven years before.

         316 - Gilda, United States, 1946.  Dir. Charles Vidor.
         http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/11/316-gilda-united-states-1946-dir.html

Stanley Kubrick was 28 when he made this film.  Yet he already had a sure sense of who he was as an artist.

The political tension is palpable.

The human abuse of power is real.

Colonel Dax has a heavy weight to bear.