"Sitting on nearly everyone’s perennial list of the greatest antiwar films, Stanley Kubrick’s classic, set amid the ranks of a decadent French army command during World War I, offers breathtaking filmmaking on every level: acting, directing, writing, technical. A piercing Kirk Douglas shows up with his reliable blend of machismo and conscience. Veteran actors like Adolphe Menjou and George Macready are magnificent. However, Wayne Morris, Timothy Carey, and Kubrick regular Joseph Turkel bring a grit and suffering to offset the spit and polish of the debauched French commanders. Calder Willingham and the great novelist/screenwriter Jim Thompson wrote the script. The film features incredible photography by George Krause. Along with The Killing, Paths of Glory marks the critical onset of Kubrick’s now legendary career."

"Kubrick was a fearsome intellect. His approach to filmmaking and storytelling remains as mysterious at it is compelling. The illusion of control over the medium is total. Both films speak eloquently about the scale of a man against the tide of history, and both raise the bar for every “historical” film to follow. Paths of Glory is a searing indictment of the war machine, as pertinent now as it was in its day. I suspect, however, that Kubrick was also a highly instinctive director, and that he grasped incessantly for his films. An anecdote tells us of him begging Kirk Douglas to stay in bed a few more days after an accident, because Kubrick was using the “downtime” to understand the film they were making."

"Kubrick was a fearsome intellect. His approach to filmmaking and storytelling remains as mysterious at it is compelling. The illusion of control over the medium is total. Both films speak eloquently about the scale of a man against the tide of history, and both raise the bar for every “historical” film to follow. Paths of Glory is a searing indictment of the war machine, as pertinent now as it was in its day. I suspect, however, that Kubrick was also a highly instinctive director, and that he grasped incessantly for his films. An anecdote tells us of him begging Kirk Douglas to stay in bed a few more days after an accident, because Kubrick was using the “downtime” to understand the film they were making."

"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."

"If 1956’s The Killing set the scene for a visionary new director, Paths of Glory, released a year later confirms it. Adapted from a novel that had
 appeared two decades earlier, the film has gained stature over the years. It is the
 darkest evocation of war ever filmed; you feel the pain, the fear and discomfort
 experienced by French soldiers engaged in a meaningless, suicidal battle with
 a faceless German enemy. The cast of American actors convincingly portray
 heartless French officers and outnumbered enlisted men. Kirk Douglas gives his best performance as Colonel Dax, as does Adolphe Menjou as Dax’s antagonist, General Broulard. You can see Kubrick’s early influences,
 Orson Welles and Max Ophüls, in his camerawork and editing style, but the
 film is totally original and powerful, and even has a touch of
 sentimentality in the final sequence. The famous tracking shots in the trenches
 accompanied by the constant drumbeat of bombs and artillery will remain in your memory long after you’ve experienced the film. The contrast between the
 high-living generals and the downtrodden soldiers is also a constant reminder
 of the folly and inequity of war."

"Spartacus is a great movie, too. It’s also one of those epic pictures. The story is great. I think what’s cool is you had a young director. The fact that he had to walk on there — Kubrick was in his 20s and they fired the original director, and it was produced by Kirk Douglas, so being a star producer — I can kind of relate to that. He brought this kid on set, and didn’t really know him. He turned out to be this incredible genius who did these incredible battle scenes, and just some beautiful stuff in there with real extras — they had 5,000 extras. If you call “Cut! Reset!,” it took half a day to put everybody back in their positions. That’s an accomplishment, I think. Scale, but also keeping it intimate in those close-ups. Also, they said that [Kubrick] always designed the last shot of his movies first. He tried to sum up the whole picture in the last shot of the movie, like Dr. Strangelove. The guy sitting on the bomb, falling down. That’s a classic shot. In Spartacus, it was Spartacus hanging on the cross being crucified, and there’s a row of crosses leading all the way to Rome, I guess, to the horizon. Then his son is born a free man at his feet, and his wife says, “Spartacus, please die.” Because he was so tough, he wouldn’t die on the cross. She’s asking him to die, while she’s sitting there with his son who is free now. He’s not a slave anymore. Anyways, it’s a beautiful movie."

"Outside of 2001: A Space Odyssey, these are my favorite Kubrick films. The Killing is a tense and lean noir starring the great Sterling Hayden and a cast of character actors (Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Jay C. Flippen, Timothy Carey, et al.), each of whom possesses his or her own special brand of menace and pathos. The film’s dialogue is by the best crime writer who ever lived, Jim Thompson (who worked with Kubrick and Calder Willingham on Paths of Glory as well), and it’s the music in Kubrick’s nonlinear racetrack heist caper, which I think is the best noir ever made. Hayden is one of the most curious creatures to ever grace the screen. I can never take my eyes off him, and as gruff as he is, I always feel for him. The tragic, cosmic joke at the end of this movie will break your heart—even when you’re wondering why you wanted this bum to get away with the crime. Johnny Clay is the ultimate “beautiful loser.” Paths of Glory is, in my humble opinion, the finest war film ever made. While not concerned primarily with combat and focusing instead on its multilayered consequences, the drama is as explosive as any battlefield action you’ll ever see. It lays bare the blatant hypocrisy of the powers that be, who never get their hands dirty but put innocent and well-intentioned men in the trenches to fight their battles for them. Kubrick takes us through the trenches with dazzling tracking shots that show us the weathered faces of the men who fought the Great War, some of whom will later be brought to trial and executed for “cowardice” after not being able to pull off an impossible mission. Kirk Douglas has never been better. And if the final scene in the battered cabaret, featuring Kubrick’s future wife, Christiane, singing a German folk song, doesn’t destroy you completely, you are probably some hideous sun demon."