#101 Paths Of Glory - not the worst of the Kubrick films IMO

1957. dir Stanley Kubrick, starring Kirk Douglas, George Macready, Wayne Morris, Adolphe Menjou.

Seen it before? No.

Those French military guys are some bad MFs!!! Actually, who really knows? I sure haven't spent enough time learning about WWI. Meanwhile the Civil War and WWII are crammed down your throats throughout high school. So Kirk Douglas leads his troop into battle but there is no honor among these men as one part of the regimen didn't make their way out of their barracks...and unfortunately Kirk Douglas' men have to pay the price with their lives.

You know it's funny how many times I would like to reach through the television screen and throttle some of the characters that appear in these movies. This movie was one of them. I would have liked to shake some of Douglas' superiors for being such, well, bastards...If you're going to screw up and cost men their lives fess up already dammit! The three men who ended up going to the "mock" trial - it was a "real" trial in that there were people trying to give proof of how these men were valiant soldiers but it was just staged to try to make it look like there was a legitimate reason for killing them - were men you could relate to...they had families and, for the most part, they didn't deserve to die. I was sooooooooooooooo pissed off by this movie!!!

See it again? NO THANKS!
Own it? Doesn't my answer to the above question say it all?

#101 Paths Of Glory: I'm not afraid of dying tomorrow, only of getting killed

1957. dir Stanley Kubrick, starring Kirk Douglas, George Macready, Wayne Morris, Adolphe Menjou.

Seen it before? No.

Kirk Douglas plays Col. Dax, a French army officer in World War I. The commanding officers order a suicidal attack on a German fortification, which fails, so they decide to court-martial and execute three randomly selected soldiers for cowardice. Dax is outraged by the arbitrary, unfair punishment, so he takes up the defense of the three soldiers.

There really aren't a whole lot of World War I movies, I suppose because it was so horrible, and there were no clear good guys or bad guys. This movie was banned in France, and you can see why; they make the generals out to be totally evil and sadistic. Of course that doesn't mean it was unrealistic.

Position on the list: 49
The title: From Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard":

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th'inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.