Paths of Glory (1957) is fictional non-entertainment. Legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s movie of a minor attack by the French during World War I, and its fallout, focuses on man’s inhumanity: the ambition of one general, even in the face of overwhelming odds; the pettiness of another in assuming the idealistic actions of a colonel actually provide cover for his ambition; the cowardice of a lieutenant, and how he covers it.
There’s a story, but it’s not conventional. We do not see the sympathetic protagonist triumph over the antagonists; the smoke and awfulness of war serve to cover up the banal evil that envelops the French High Command, a command group with an old-fashioned morality which has little basic human respect for the infantry man, for the man who used to hold a pike or a lance, but is now equipped with far more firepower – and is far more vulnerable than ever before.
So this is a story of the clash of moralities; the old morality where the State subordinated all to its needs, and therefore those who controlled the State could indulge their foolishness with little more than worry than that their ambitions might not be slaked; and the new morality, newborn and struggling, trying to value the individual, to treat each other personally with honor – and the results when the two clash, and neither is served well.
Men struggle and fall in this great clash, of Powers and of moralities, and nearly all is distress, until in the final scene, at a bar, a troop of men, battle-hardened and weary, having just carried out an execution, sit in a bar, drinks in hand, and are at their raucous worst as a young, lost German woman is paraded out by the bar owner. They hoot and yell and abuse her for her nationality.
Until she begins to sing. Poorly, haltingly. And the men stop their ribaldry, and soon they’re humming along with her, reminded of better times, when foolish pride and rivalry had not yet led powerful States into unnecessary Wars with each other. Before losing face meant the sacrifice of the little man. Back when men & women need not struggle against each other in more than gin rummy, perhaps, as peaceful friends. Before it became necessary to shoot a man strapped to a stretcher.
You will not enjoy this movie, but it may move you. Kubrick was a master, and this is a masterpiece, from dialog to make up, from cinematography to audio, from the chatter of weapons while men obliviously make plans in the trenches that may become their tombs, to the irritated general, distressed by impertinent questions from the press and his subordinates, striding through the ballroom as general officers and their wives and mistresses dance to gay tunes. Kubrick’s carefully chosen contrasts illuminate the sad lack of necessity of the Great War, and the distressing evil lust of those who call for more of it, even today.
