As our
7th round pick
Self-made Heroes is proud to pick
Paths of Glory (1957) in the
Pre-1960's category. Possibly the best movie by Kubrick in my opinion.
Corporal Paris: See that cockroach? Tomorrow morning, we'll be dead and it'll be alive. It'll have more contact with my wife and child than I will. I'll be nothing, and it'll be alive.
[Ferol smashes the roach]
Private Ferol: Now you got the edge on him.
General Broulard:There are few things more fundamentally encouraging and stimulating than seeing someone else die - one way to maintain discipline is to shoot a man now and then.
"
Paths Of Glory was the first time Stanley Kubrick got to work with a major star - and in the late 1950s, stars didn't come any more major than Kirk Douglas. He championed this 'hard to sell' anti-war film to the Hollywood studios, and bankrolled the 28-year-old tyro director who, with his growing reputation, still had it all to prove in Hollywood. And with his indignant performance Douglas provides an emotional counterbalance to Kubrick's chilly, conceptual style."
"Adapted from Humphrey Cobb's based-on-fact novel, the film tells the story of a botched WWI French attack. In return for a promised promotion, General Mireau (George Macready), charges his troops with the impossible task of storming Ant Hill, a German position. The attack is led by Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), who dutifully leads his men into the German guns. When the attack dissolves into chaos and a rout, the furious general first orders his artillery to fire on his own men, and, to pass the blame, chooses three soldiers at random to go before a court martial to explain their cowardice, with Dax acting as defence counsel."
When interviewed in 1969, Kirk Douglas recalled Paths of Glory as the summit of his acting career: "There's a picture that will always be good, years from now. I don't have to wait 50 years to know that; I know it now."