Paths of Glory

(Stanley Kubrick, US 1957, 88 min., DCP)

"Max Ophuls died today-this is to honor him." With these words Kubrick began shooting some of cinema's most unforgettable tracking shots depicting the French trenches of WWI. Adapted from the true story by Humphrey Cobb, Paths of Glory is the harrowing tale of a French general (Adolphe Menjou) who orders his men on a suicide mission and a colonel's (Kirk Douglas) struggle to maintain his men's and his own sanity amid the slaughter of trench warfare. This stirring indictment of the murderous power of the military caste system was seen upon its release by the French authorities as a slander against their nation's honor and subsequently banned from theaters.