In an age characterized on the one hand by a cult of happy mediocrity and on the other by the growing power, prestige, and necessity of the military, Paths of Glory is a specter from our unsophisticated past….
Directed with obvious sincerity and restraint, Paths of Glory is an explosion upon our consciousness. The locale is France and the time is 1916 but the film has an insistent immediacy that is at once stunning and upsetting. Though unfashionable it is timely and also timeless, the especial qualities of art. The military, committed to the game of wholesale destruction for personal glory, is, by definition, petty and corrupt. But that is an irreverent thing to say about our fatted protector. Paths of Glory is only permissible, though deemed unfashionable, because it deals with the French army…. The American myth of military purity remains inviolate….
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