Paths of Glory

Paths of Glory (1957) was Kubrick's first major film and says more in eighty eight minutes than most war films manage in two and a half hours. France, 1916. A general orders an attack on a position that cannot be taken. The attack fails. Rather than accept responsibility, the command decides to shoot three soldiers for cowardice. Colonel Dax defends them. The film has a split architecture. In the trenches the camera never stops moving, walking through mud with the men. In the generals' château the rooms are wide, bright and empty. Two worlds inside the same army with nothing connecting them. It went unshown in France for years and was banned in Spain. Depicting the class divide inside an army this plainly was too much for the period. The final scene is the one soft moment after all that anger, and it is among the most remembered endings in war cinema. Good for: war films, courtroom drama, and anyone tracing Kubrick back to the start. It is short. Less good for: there is an execution and the ending offers no justice. Anyone here for action will not find it.