Paths of Glory

Wednesday, November 22 at 7:30 PM — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door

PATHS OF GLORY
Directed by Stanley Kubrick • 1957
Fresh from The Killing, an overachieving crime thriller with a twisty chronology that played better with critics than audiences, producer James B. Harris and director Stanley Kubrick embarked upon an equally grisly and commercially dubious follow-up: an adaptation of Paths of Glory, a forgotten, out-of-print 1935 novel by Humphrey Cobb. An unrelenting portrayal of trench combat during World War I, Paths of Glory was wisely punched up with enough speechifying to attract actor-producer Kirk Douglas, who took the juicy role of Colonel Dax, a commanding officer in the French army who summons his prewar legal avocation to defend three soldiers from court martial. But the fix is in: the soldiers tried for cowardice are always a moment away from death while the generals spend their days in palatial chateaus, plotting the next move as if it were all just a game. (In a marvelous bit of casting, suave gentleman actor and recent friendly HUAC witness Adolphe Menjou plays scheming General Broulard.) What could have been a dowdy message movie about man’s inhumanity to man is dangerously enlivened by two Killing alumni with no respectable aspirations whatsoever: pulp novelist Jim Thompson mapped out early drafts of the script while character actor Timothy Carey added a note of strung-out beat nihilism to his portrayal of the doomed Private Ferol. (Carey was enough of a real-life wild man to be fired by Kubrick in the middle of the production after faking his own kidnapping.) Paths of Glory didn’t wind up with any Oscar nominations, but it did take Kubrick out of the trenches and into the Hollywood big time when Douglas summoned him to take over the troubled production of Spartacus. (KW)
88 min • United Artists • 35mm from Park Circus

Preceded by: Kirk Douglas trailer reel – 10 min – 35mm  35mm

NEXT UP: The New World on Wednesday, November 29 at Music Box