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1957 Stanley Kubrick film starring Kirk Douglas, set in France during World War I
Paths of Glory

Paths of Glory is a 1957 American anti-war film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers who refuse to continue a suicidal attack, after which Dax attempts to defend them against a charge of cowardice in a court-martial.

Cast and Crew

Kirk DouglasCol. Dax
Stanley KubrickDirector, screenwriter

Video Products

Paths of Glory, 29 Jun 1999
Paths of Glory (The Criterion Collection), 26 Oct 2010

Articles

Memorial Day Alternative, by Butler Shaffer, 16 May 2007
Short summaries of anti-war films with rankings (as a number of *'s [1-3]) in terms of importance
** Paths of Glory – A Kirk Douglas film. A general sends his men on a suicide mission. When the mission fails, a few soldiers are arbitrarily selected to be tried — and executed — for cowardice.
Memorializing the Horrors of War with 10 Must-See War Films, by John W. Whitehead, 27 May 2016
Comments on the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and on more recent wars, then suggests ten films that focus on "the nasty business of war"; ends by contrasting Obama's and Martin Luther King's Nobel Peace Prize speeches
Paths of Glory (1957). This Stanley Kubrick film is an antiwar masterpiece. The setting is 1916, when two years of trench warfare have arrived at a stalemate. And while nothing of importance is occurring in the war, thousands of lives are being lost. But the masters of war pull the puppet strings, and the blood continues to flow. This film is packed with good performances, especially from Kirk Douglas and George Macready.

Reviews

The Great Anti-War Films: Paths of Glory, by Rick Gee, 9 Oct 2001
Kubrick desired the freedom to work autonomously, unencumbered by the hierarchical studio system. His fourth feature film, Paths of Glory (1957), is a devastating denunciation of the hierarchical structure of military organizations wherein the elite officers are detached from the brutal realities of the soldiers who do the actual fighting, and dying.

Videos


Paths of Glory - Trailer, 1957
Includes several memorable scenes, such as Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas character) telling off Major General Broulard, Dax discussing casualty estimates with Brigadier General Mireau, and Mireau ordering to fire on their own position

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Paths of Glory" as of 12 Aug 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.