Stanley Kubrick (1957)
Stanley Kubrick’s fourth feature, although an odd mixture of elements and styles, is compelling. It’s easy to see why the film was publically controversial on its release and remained so for years afterwards (it wasn’t screened in France until 1975). Based on the 1935 novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb (adapted for the screen by Kubrick, Jim Thompson and Calder Willingham), Paths of Glory is set during the First World War. Its characters are soldiers, of various ranks, of the French army. It tells the story of an attempt by the French to make a breakthrough by taking a well-defended German position known as ‘the Ant Hill’. When General Broulard proposes this attack to General Mireau, the latter initially dismisses the idea as doomed to failure; when Broulard suggests there might nevertheless be a promotion for Mireau in leading what will be, to a very considerable extent, a suicide mission for the regiment in question, Mireau makes an about turn. The raid on the Ant Hill goes ahead, heavy casualties are sustained among the first wave of men, led by the regiment colonel Dax, and none of them advances beyond no man’s land into German trenches. The next wave of soldiers refuses to leave their own trench. The enraged Mireau orders his artillery to open fire on their colleagues to force them forward but the artillery officer-in-charge refuses to carry out this instruction without written confirmation of it. After the debacle and in order to try and save face, Mireau orders the court martial of one hundred soldiers on charges of cowardice. Colonel Dax suggests that he alone be court-martialled on behalf of the regiment. The eventual compromise, advised by Broulard, is that three men – one from each company of the regiment – be court-martialled. Dax defends them in the outrageously unfair proceedings which follow later that day and which result in all three being sentenced to death. (Dax was a leading criminal lawyer in France in peacetime but his knowledge of the rulebook and adversarial skills count for nothing here.) Sentence is duly carried out but not before Dax has done for Mireau by presenting Broulard with sworn statements that attest to the order Mireau gave to shell his own trenches. Dax also refuses Broulard’s offer of Mireau’s job.
Prior to this film, Kubrick’s features had been a military adventure (Fear and Desire (1953)) and two films noirs (Killer’s Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956)). At eighty-three minutes, The Killing is the longest of the three. You might expect Paths of Glory to be scaled very differently but Kubrick carries forward into it both narrative economy (the running time is only ninety minutes) and other characteristics of his earlier work. Although Broulard and Mireau discuss the attack on the Ant Hill in the light and space of the chateau which is serving as military headquarters for the French general staff, their exchange of dialogue – both the writing and the editing of the sequence – brings to mind the planning of a more familiar kind of screen crime. Kubrick wasn’t always a good director of actors and some of the cast here, although they’re striking camera subjects and might be vividly effective in a film noir, are unable to create stable characterisations. This is particularly true of the volatile Timothy Carey, who plays one of the three soldiers court-martialled. George Macready as Mireau isn’t a coherent personality either but this is less the actor’s fault than the script’s: Mireau, who epitomises and pays the price for his atrocious military ambition, is one of the morals of the story rather than a character. Richard Anderson, as Mireau’s aide-de-camp, is a conventionally villainous prosecutor in the court martial section, rather better when he reiterates the charges shortly before the firing squad sentence is carried out. On the plus side, Adolphe Menjou, although he’s playing a caricature of military top brass, brings varied but consistent and nastily amusing detail to the role of General Broulard: this affable, effortlessly self-protective fellow keeps smiling even when he’s turning the knife in Mireau. Kirk Douglas provides no great surprises in his portrait of the valorous, dutiful and principled Dax but he strikes a good balance between passionate moral declamation and carefully hostile reserve.
There’s a persistent tension between the strongly cinematic elements and the wordy script, in which the points of view that the characters represent are laid out as they might be in a stage play (the novel had been adapted for the stage, by Sidney Howard, in the year of its publication). The contrasting settings are strongly atmospheric, especially the eerie opulence of the chateau. The action in the trenches is imaginative and dynamic – not only the combat sequences but the travelling shots that describe Mireau’s inspection of the troops before the Ant Hill assault begins. Kubrick makes a quick cut from the end of the court martial session to the preparations for carrying out the death sentence, emphasising quietly but incisively the miserable inevitability of the judgment. The firing squad sequence is powerfully staged – with one of the three men, who fractured his skull in a fracas the night before in the condemned cell, practically unconscious but propped up to face the guns. (Joe Turkel is good in this role. Ralph Meeker is the third unlucky soldier.)
The oddest sequence in the film is an addendum: that’s what it feels like and, according to the BFI programme note, that’s what it was. The French soldiers are drinking together, unaware they’re about to be recalled to action. A frightened German girl is presented to them and you fear for what will happen to her. (This, the only female part in the picture, is played by Susanne Christian aka Christiane Kubrick.) When the girl starts singing a German folk song (Der Treue Husar), however, the mood changes; the rough soldiers are at first quietened by the quality of her voice then start singing along with her. The sequence crystallises the opposition of Kubrick’s skill and instincts with what he appears to have been asked to do to make Paths of Glory more palatable to audiences. The collection of faces and the movement of the camera across them are remarkable but the conception of the scene is false, a sentimental assertion of shared humanity. How come the Frenchmen know the tune of a German song so well?
15 May 2014
