|
Volume 22, Number 1 (1997) reprinted by permission Oklahoma City University Law Review WHAT PRICE PROPAGANDA? WHEN THE PATHS OF GLORY LED BUT TO THE PULPIT ROBERT BARR SMITH* At the same time, Kubrick painted his characters in black and white, reminding the viewer of an old western, where you know the bad guys from the good guys by the color of their hats. Much heralded as an "anti-war statement" (that, at least, is the usual characterization), this film is really a stilted morality play, without the saving grace of a promise of salvation. Expertly made in the technical sense, Paths of Glory is fine, if dreary, theatre. But that is all it is. The muddy trenches are reasonably realistic and the uniforms are right for the day. The sound effects are convincing, and the cast is superb. However, the story itself leaves the viewer both unpersuaded and just plain tired. The film is based on Humphrey Cobb's 1935 novel of the same name, and perhaps on a later play, an adaptation of the novel by Leslie Howard (neither to be confused with Irvin S. Cobb's Paths of Glory, which is a fine piece of 1915 factual reporting). Both the novel and the play are more moving than the film, even though all three are anti-war propaganda first and drama second. Howard, in fact, called the play "a billboard of protest . . . an indictment of war. . . ." With minor variations, all vigorously wave the same banners and follow about the same plot. It goes like this. The year is 1916 (1915 in the play). A repulsively vain, ambitious General George Macready, responding to directives from above, orders an attack over bad ground against a virtually impregnable German strongpoint called The Anthill. One of the units going over the top is the veteran infantry regiment led by Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas). The regiment does not get very far, butchered by German artillery and machine gun fire before it gets close to the objective. One company is pinned down in its starting position and never gets out of its trenches. Macready is infuriated, so much so that he orders the French artillery to fire on the hapless infantry. The artillery commander refuses to do so without a written order and is relieved from his command on the spot. Macready, balked of his success, promotion and decoration, takes out his anger on Dax's regiment. He will shoot people wholesale, he swears, pour encourager les autres. He will do so in spite of Dax's protestations that he alone has failed, if anybody has. The regiment is saved from mass decimation only by the next higher-ranking General--Adolph Menjou, in a wonderfully suave, urbane, and amoral role. Menjou, purring over a succulent meal in a warm, well-lit chateau, curbs Macready's blood lust and shields Colonel Dax from the commander's wrath. Menjou does so, however, with a marvelous cynicism that leaves no doubt that the quality of his wine means something more to him than the lives of a few poilus somewhere out in the mire and blood of the front line. At last, unwillingly, the frustrated Macready must settle for the lives of three unhappy men, chosen at random from three of Dax's companies. One of the unlucky defendants, "a social undesirable" in his own words, is chosen because he is the most troublesome man in the unit. The second man is selected by lot. The third man, nicely underplayed by Ralph Meeker, is a corporal chosen because his lieutenant, Wayne Morris, a prewar friend, is a coward and aware that Meeker knows his dirty secret. The two are together on night patrol, during which the lieutenant panics and kills another French soldier with a grenade. Nominating Meeker to be tried for cowardice will silence the only possible witness against the lieutenant. In both the book and the play, the doomed soldiers are represented before their court-martial by an appointed defender, who is active and unafraid, yet quite aware that nothing he does will alter the result of the trial. While the court's guilty verdict is unanimous, the court is split over the death penalty, two to one. In the movie, though not in the novel or the play, Dax conveniently turns out to have been a famous criminal lawyer in civilian life and ends up defending his own men. This unusual talent thus gives Douglas, as star and straight arrow, more exposure in the film. More importantly, it also furnishes him a stage from which to make several impassioned speeches to the court (and the audience). The trial itself is rigged, of course. The members of the court-martial are portrayed as spineless pawns, ready to condemn their own mothers if the commander asked them to. Macready's unctuous aide prosecutes, and Dax's feeble attempts to defend are impatiently balked by the president of the court-martial. Adding to the atmosphere of unreality, Macready sits in the courtroom watching the proceedings. Predictably, the sentence is death. That night, the men are visited by a priest, a decent man who attempts to comfort the bewildered prisoners. He is attacked in a drunken rage by the man chosen by lot. Meeker knocks the attacker down, fracturing his skull. Of course, the men, who are still largely uncomprehending, are duly shot next morning. There is appropriate treatment of their tragic last moments, with much marching and drumbeating, in front of a large, beautiful chateau. In a macabre twist, the man with the fractured skull is carried to the execution ground on a litter and then propped up on his litter to be shot. The sergeant in command of the firing squad slaps him gently on the cheek, trying to get him to open his eyes. After all, the execution will go better if he is awake. The film ends with Dax, still in command, sadly watching a group of his men whistling and cheering in a cheap bistro, while being entertained by a shy singer. She is German, (how she got there is not explained) but she is finally coaxed into singing "Ein Treuer Hussar" in German. The hilarity abruptly disappears, the room grows absolutely quiet, and the men begin to hum along with the singer. As the humming continues, Dax is told that his regiment has been ordered back to the front. This is a well-done moment, probably the best in the film, although it does not occur in either the book or the play. To paraphrase another French general, the film is magnificent, but it certainly is not war. It may have been based, as Cobb and Howard have both said, on the records of a real French court-martial. Maybe so. It sounds, however, as if Paths of Glory had its genesis in the French mutinies of 1917. Indeed, a note to the novel suggests the origin of both the play and the book was a French mutiny court-martial of 1915, reversed long after the war. The 1917 soldiers' revolts were a time of peril for France. For at least a brief period, only two reliable French divisions stood between the Germans and Paris. A British offensive to the north, launched ahead of schedule in an effort to help, drew the Germans' attention away from the chaotic French defenses, and the crisis passed. The mutinies--"strikes" might be a better word--were not spawned from cowardice, or disloyalty, or lack of patriotism. Instead, the soldiers' discontent was grounded in very real morale problems: the months spent in the blood and mud of the trenches, a disgraceful lack of leave, the absence of even minimal comforts, and, above all, the reptilian propaganda of a coalition of left-wing groups in the French capitol, who were powerful, well-financed, and insidious. Many officers agreed with their men's grievances; a few even joined them. New French leaders moved quickly to correct some of the worse abuses that had aroused the French soldiers. The nests of anti-war agitators (many German-financed) were shut down. With these measures, morale improved, and the bulk of the French Army went back into the trenches and fought on. Many of the poilus, if not most, had never been real mutineers. There had been a good bit of singing of the Internationale and election of soldiers' councils. However, most of the men were not hostile to their immediate commanders. They did not harm their leaders nor set out on orgies of rape and pillage. Most of them even refused to steal from French villages when they ran out of food, while camped in the mud and rain. They were not traitors, only good soldiers horribly frustrated, shocked by too much blood, and suffering from too little care from the political leadership and the high command. However, the French command could not wait for its remedial measures to take gradual effect. It really had no choice. It had to act swiftly. If it did not crush the mutiny, the war was lost, for the Hun was literally at the gates of Paris. The British could not carry the whole war alone, and the German command could not remain forever ignorant of the fragility of the French front. So, the French command struck hard at the ringleaders of the mutinies or at the men who appeared to be the leaders. It struck to remove the agitators from the ranks, to punish them, but, above all, to make an example. Fatherly concessions to the troops were all very well and indeed, many were deserved. However, it also stood to reason that very few men would volunteer to lead mutinies if they knew they would end up before a firing squad at daybreak in a sodden field. Some mutineers were simply shot out of hand; nobody knows how many. Of these, some were executed after drumhead courts-martial; others were simply shot by the nearest officer or sergeant. Many others, like Dax's forlorn warriors, were tried by regularly-convened courts-martial. Some were executed, and others sent to prison. Many others were condemned to death but had their sentences commuted to imprisonment, often because of their fine combat records prior to the mutiny. The draconian measures taken to halt the 1917 mutiny bore no real comparison to the judicial murders in Paths of Glory. Nor could they. While the French command punished mutineers out of necessity, no one would have bothered shooting soldiers over a failed assault. Attacks often fell short, even when the attacking troops performed with utmost heroism. Realistically, the leaders spent their time figuring out what went wrong, and trying to repair the failure before the next offensive. The major problem with Paths of Glory is its foundation. The fine performances, the drab, dreary sets, and the unusual camera angles are founded on sand. The whole thing is just too hard to believe. In the first place, The Anthill is called "the key to the German position." In the real world, such an objective would have been attacked by fresh, rested troops with substantial supports, covered by all the available artillery. In the film, however, The Anthill is attacked on twenty-four hours' notice by a tired, vulnerable unit with no reinforcement or extra artillery support. Everybody in the chain of command, even Macready, knows that Dax's men are unlikely to even get close to their objective. In fact, Macready himself opposes the attack until Menjou hints that he may have to find a commander who believes in the offensive. Secondly, World War I was a long series of failed assaults. It was commonplace for an attack to fail in its objective, given the dominance of heavy artillery, barbed wire, and the machine gun. Dax's unit is a good one and has performed well in other bloody battles. No soldier would be likely to criticize such a unit for stopping short of The Anthill, especially since the moviegoer learns that Dax's regiment suffered appalling casualties in the unsuccessful attack. In short, Paths of Glory, having a chance to say something important about the agony of war, filled the screen with sound and fury but failed to say much that was believable. Kubrick was so anxious to condemn war that he overdid the whole thing and ended up with a sort of black satire. It was fun to watch and mighty well done, but it just didn't persuade. I wasn't even sure what the message really was. Part of the problem, perhaps, was the difficulty Howard identified in Cobb's play: "He has scarcely troubled to develop character." Even the film's contrasts were overdone--shouting "Message! Message!" at every opportunity. The night before the execution, for example, Dax goes to Menjou's headquarters to plead for commutation of the death sentence. The headquarters is in a palatial chateau, of course, and a full dress ball is underway, an orchestra is playing waltzes and the floor is filled with officers and graceful ladies. We have just seen the condemned men shivering in an unheated hut, swilling wine and receiving last rites. Now, Dax is closeted with the General in his large, warm study, while the orchestra thunders away in the background. We cannot miss the stark contrast between the soldiers and the leadership. Nor can we entirely believe it. Macready's general is a caricature--a well-played caricature, but a cardboard man all the same. He even has an obvious scar across his face, for emphasis. Menjou is wonderfully evil, a sort of urbane Lucifer, assigning the basest motives to others, and stealing souls with promises of promotion and decoration. He actually believes the transparently honest Dax is angling for Macready's job, after Dax gets Macready fired for ordering the artillery to fire on his own men. But Menjou, too, is just a little too vile to believe. The hard facts of World War I were that the senior French commanders had served in combat time and again in their youth. They had led from the front; they were accustomed to knowing their men and taking care of them. They were not all saints. They had their share of ambitious, self-seeking men with little scruple or conscience. Even these men, however, would not casually shoot French soldiers without real reason, especially not with a National Assembly full of strident politicians ready and eager to criticize. With all its faults, Paths of Glory has its moments. Its journeyman cast gets all the mileage possible out of the script, and the film's mood of despair and gloom is almost palpable. The battle scenes are convincing, even though the director had these veteran troops bunching up under machine gun fire, something experienced soldiers would not do in action. The final scene, in which Dax's men hum along with the German singer, is as good as it gets. The real tragedy of Paths of Glory is that it could have told a really troublesome story about the ugliness of war--a true story. It could have skipped to 1917, the year of the mutinies. It could have dealt with the very real dilemma of brave, patriotic men pushed beyond endurance by incessant bloodletting, by lack of success, by month after month at the front without leave, and by ceaseless agitation against the war on the home front. The French army had lost much of its cream during the autumn of 1914; 1915 had brought more horrendous casualties but no real victory; 1916 was the year of the hecatomb at Verdun. Now, in 1917, the bloodshed went on endlessly. It was little wonder that many units mutinied. Many declared themselves ready to oppose any German offensive, but not to attack. Others actually left their station and refused all orders. Others organized in commune-like groups and talked about marching on Paris. Kubrick might have explored what drove good men to such desperate lengths. He might have looked into the hearts of the men, equally tired, who stayed in the line. He might have touched the torment of officers who often sympathized deeply with their men, but were nevertheless compelled to arrest, imprison and try some of them, or even to shoot to keep the rot from spreading. Kubrick might have done these things and produced something of great value--a film of the stature of Breaker Morant2 or To Kill A Mockingbird.3 But he didn't. Instead, he spent all his time sending his message, and a fine opportunity was largely wasted. What might have been a tour de force of the human heart became, instead, a rather pointless, contrived tale of petty ambition. The French army deserved much better than it got. So did the actors. So did the public. |
