The paths to glory: the Stanley Kubrick which took 18 years to be released in France

This black and white war film, starring a sublime Kirk Douglas, returns to TV.

Arte will rebroadcast this Monday evening Paths of Gloryof Stanley Kubrickfollowed by Furyowith David Bowie.

Stanley Kubrick's fourth production is too often sidelined in the filmmaker's filmography. We often think of 2001 A Space Odyssey, Shining, Full Metal Jacket or even A Clockwork Orange. Paths of Glory is nevertheless an essential feature film.

In the mid-1950s, before focusing on the Vietnam War, Kubrick took up the subject of the First World War and decided to treat the war film by circumventing the codes of the genre. It plunges us into the French trenches in 1916 where General Dax (Kirk Douglas) orders an attack against an impregnable German position. From the start of the assault, the soldiers fell en masse and the survivors decided to retreat to find a better destiny. A mock trial then follows against three of them.

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From the start, the viewer knows the end of the story, but Kubrick brilliantly exposes the entire process of the war trials. He organizes his film into three distinct acts composed in a theatrical manner: war, trial then a focus on humanity. We find everything that made Kubrick's cinema: tracking shots, sequence shots and beautiful sets. Filmed in black and white, Paths of Glory shows a bleak side of war and the ranks where the enemy is always invisible.

This film is more a reflection on war than a war film. Carried by a masterful performance by Kirk Douglas and superb trial scenes, it is considered today as a true cinematic gem, although upon its release, it was not distributed in France, following pressure from the French government (among others), which saw it as a direct criticism of the French army during the First World War. He doesn't have “censorship” the film itself, but the protest movement made so much noise at the time that the production preferred not to broadcast it, as in Switzerland. It was not until 1975, 18 years after its creation, that it was released on our screens.

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