Paths of Glory (1957)
Synopsis
Paths of Glory is an American anti- war film by Stanley Kubrick based on the 1935
novel of the same title by WWI combat veteran Humphrey Cobb. Set during World
War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Col o nel Dax, the commanding officer of a
French regiment involved in a failed attack on a German stronghold. Dax, a lawyer
in civilian life, attempts to defend three of his subordinates against a charge of cow-
ardice in an ensuing court- martial.
Background
Humphrey Cobb (1899–1944) was an American expatriate who served with the
Canadian Expeditionary Forces (CEF) in the First World War and was wounded
and gassed at the Battle of Amiens in August 1918. In 1934 Cobb read a news item
about the posthumous exoneration of five French soldiers who had been executed
by firing squad after their unit refused to join a suicidal attack in the St. Mihiel
sector on 19 April 1915 (Anonymous, 2 July 1934). Incensed by the absurd injus-
tice of the original incident, Cobb was inspired to write Paths of Glory, a highly
acclaimed anti- war novel published by Viking Press in 1935. That same year Sid-
ney Howard staged an unsuccessful Broadway play based on Cobb’s book and Par-
amount won a bidding war for the film rights, but let its option lapse. In 1956
James B. Harris and Stanley Kubrick bought the rights from Cobb’s widow for
$10,000 and tried to interest Dore Schary at MGM but he refused, citing the
recent box office disaster that was John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage. Unde-
terred, Harris hired Jim Thompson to write a screen adaptation of Cobb’s novel.
Kubrick, Thompson, and Calder Willingham had a second draft completed by
late November 1956. Kubrick and Harris wanted Gregory Peck to play the lead role
of Col. Dax but he was not immediately available. They tried to interest Charlton
Heston but he signed with Orson Welles to star in Touch of Evil (1958), so they
secured Kirk Douglas instead, who demanded a $350,000 salary, profit sharing,
and other perks. On the strength of Douglas’s involvement, United Artists (UA)
agreed to provide a modest $954,000 production bud get, a third of which would
pay for Douglas’s salary.
Production
Though supposedly taking place in France, Paths of Glory was filmed in and around
Munich, Bavaria, in the spring of 1957. Most interior scenes were filmed at Bavaria’s
Geiselgasteig Studios. The court- martial scenes were shot at New Schleissheim