Paths of Glory

Paths of Glory (1957) is Stanley Kubrick's 88-minute war drama — stream it online on iFILM. Kirk Douglas plays Colonel Dax, a French officer ordered to send his men across open ground against a fortified position called the Ant Hill. The studio was Bryna Productions for United Artists.

The assault fails in minutes. Rather than own the disaster, the high command picks three random soldiers and charges them with cowardice. General Mireau (George Macready) wants executions; General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) wants the scandal buried. Dax takes on the defense and quickly grasps that the verdict was written before the first witness spoke.

Kubrick adapted Humphrey Cobb's 1935 novel, itself drawn from documented court-martial records of the French Army in the First World War. The film is almost entirely indoors after the assault sequence — marble-floored châteaux where careers are bartered, not trenches. Martin Scorsese has cited it as one of the finest anti-war films ever made. Watch Paths of Glory (1957) online on iFILM.