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Michael Korda recommended Paths of Glory (1957) in Movies (curated)

 
Paths of Glory (1957)
Paths of Glory (1957)
1957 | Classics, Drama, War

"All right, Stanley Kubrick was a genius, the master of the big, ambitious film that stuns the senses, like 2001: A Space Odyssey. But Paths of Glory is one of the last great triumphs of black-and-white filmmaking. It is also a tribute to the talent of Kirk Douglas, who here takes on the role of a French colonel in the trenches of the First World War with such explosive energy that one realizes how many films (and directors) were unworthy of Kirk’s genius as an actor—his first acting role, by the way, was onstage as the servant in Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, with Catherine Cornell, Judith Anderson, and my mother as the sisters and Ruth Gordon as the dreadful sister-in-law. Nobody has ever captured the First World War better on film (except perhaps for Jean Renoir in Grand Illusion, which is in a class by itself). A heartbreaking giant of a film, not a bad shot or a wasted frame in it; perfect filmmaking."

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If you want to know anything behind the modern Middle East, this is the book for you. It does such a good job finding the foundations for the current mess in that area. Most of it stems from the First World War, and this book does focus on T.E. Lawrence (AKA Lawrence of Arabia). Lawrence was one of the people responsible for leaders in the Middle East to join WW1, but then after the war, the UK, France, and the US backtracked and made a complete mess out of everything. Overall, a great book to get some background on the situation.