Thursday, December 11, 2014

War film 3: Paths of Glory (1957)

Stanley Kubrick's third full-length film saw him team up with Kirk Douglas in a stark but stylish screen adaptation of Humphrey Cobb's 1935 WWI novel, Paths of Glory. The film also starred Adolphe Menjou, George Macready, Richard Anderson and Ralph Meeker, and included a memorable and moving cameo by Kubrick's soon-to-be wife, Christiane Harlan. Click the image below to listen to the podcast (25.4MB, 1 hour 24 mins).



Recorded Monday 1 Dec 2014, edited by Garen Ewing.

Purchase the DVD from Amazon UK: Paths of Glory (1957)

4 comments:

  1. If you didn't have this podcast, I wouldn't have been aware of this film. (And that's true of several of the films listed here.) I've seen seven of Kubrick's last nine films (didn't see Barry or Full Jacket). He reminds me of Chaplin, in doing only a few features, but stand out films at that.

    And yes, it's good to see Adolphe in other work. This role kind of reflects his real life political views. (Kind of funny, while opposite in politics, Charlie and Adolphe appeared to think the same on money, with Charlie stuffing save deposit boxes and Adolphe buying gold bars.)

    Paths was released before my time, so never saw it at a theater or even television. I don't remember TCM ever showing this film, though they have several articles on it. So to hear you saw it there on television, again, tells me your home entertainment was far more diverse.

    I am going to be listening more, as you both covered so many interesting items. Murray, glad you got to hear that presentation piece. When I heard that, it helped me understand a bit why some older people when I was young, rarely to never talked about the wars they were in. Maybe for that reason and others, like being just horrid to remember.

    Six million Dollar man. Having seen that since it was on TV's first run. I didn't know there was an Oscar Goldman doll. I research it just to see what it looked like, and found people still selling 'new' ones still in their packages. (Also I see Anderson was in the 'Buster Keaton Story' just before this film released.)

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  2. Thanks for the comment, Linda. That presentation piece did bring it home how, although this is a film based on a novel, the sort of events it depicts actually went on, and affected real people — something I'm a lot more aware of in this series of podcasts than in the last (Adventure) ones.

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  3. Garen and Murray: I found today this interesting interview with Kirk Douglas in 2012 with Scott Feinberg on youtube.

    Kirk talks a bit about how his production company which got 'Paths of Glory' produced. 'Path of Glory' segments timed at about 47:15 to a bit on Lust of Life, but back to 'Paths of Glory' 53:55 - 57:00

    The interviewer talks about his whole life, so video is 1 hour and 33 minutes. (Search: Kirk Douglas Interview with Scott Feinberg) Hope your listeners find this interesting as well.

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