Paths Of Glory – Lead But To The Grav

If it wasn’t thanks to Kirk Douglas, Kubrick’s movie, could have never existed.
Anti-war, anti-french? Paths Of Glory (inspired by on Humphrey Cobb‘s novel), takes place in 1916, during Wold War I, and focuses on the french army fighting the germans.

Very controversial, when it came out, the movie was forbidden in France, and countries french-friendly. Indeed, it raises an issue, that despite of what it may implies in the movie, is common to every army, during war.
When you are a soldier in time of battle, it is like, you are no longer the person you were before, and you are adapting yourself into a new world, where you are no longer complying to the same rules as you did before. The worst thing war can do to you, which is an awful power, is that, it may surely pushes you to do terrible things. Death becomes trivialized, life becomes a luxury. Therefore, you are more afraid of dying outside of the battlefield. Indeed, Paths of Glory, deals with soldiers putting into death row, because they refused to fight.

Major General Georges Boulard (Adolphe Menjou) ordered the General Paul Mireau (George Macready) to pursue an attack that was quite risky. Therefore, is was Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas)’s duty to lead the soldiers. However, it turned impossible to fight. A lot of soldiers, seeing their fellows dying, refused to go into the field. Madly angry, Mireau decided to execute three soldiers in order to give an example of what can happened, when they don’t obey his orders.

Kubrick painted a clear indifference to humanity, and how absurd war decisions can be. The three soldiers were devastated, and this is where the line was drawn. There is obviously death and death. To go back to what I wrote, dying in the battlefield, for a specific and relative cause, is very different than dying for no clear reason. At least when you fight, you can survive, there is a potential possibility to avoid being killed, whereas when you’re executed, you can only pray for a miracle to happen.

Kubrick made a beautiful anti-war movie, denunciating what could happened  during war time, how human life can be taken this lightly. And the director provided the most powerful and magnificent scene at the end, which shows a German girl, who has been captured, “forced” to sing to the french soldiers, zooming into their faces, as the girl kept on with her song. When we could have thought about a different turn of event, the soldiers hummed with her, and both became an entity, but more important, they symbolized hope. A slightly bit of light, of humanity, in this very dark film.

The Killing – The Peak of Film Noir

Stanley Kubrick‘s future as a film director, was quite promising after 1956. He astonished people with his young age, and yet, large amount of experience, and potential. The Killing was the mouth-watering starter, of a nice film menu.

The filmmaker managed to transform a basic story, into a full of suspense, brilliantly mastered thriller, sprinkled by a noir atmosphere and context. Indeed, the movie deals with a group of men, going to rob a racetrack, for different personal reasons. The mastermind, Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), wanted to escape with his lady, Val (Coleen Gray), the city but also their lousy apartment, to a more luxurious life. George Peatty (Elisha Cook), a betting window teller, was trying to impress his wife, Sherry (Marie Windson) who was clearly not in love, and complaining about their lack of resources. Marvin Vinger (Jay C. Flippen), his character was quite interesting, because Kubrick, established with him, an implicit, and discrete hint of homosexuality. Indeed, Marvin, who was maybe 65 years old, was secretly attracted by Johnny who much younger. As in the 50’s, homosexuality was quite taboo if too much explicit, the young filmmaker managed to make it light, but still very present. Well, there’s left two important characters, including a bartender at the racetrack Mike O’Reilly (Joe Sawyer) who needed money to pay for heir wife’s medical treatment and Randy Keenan (Ted DeCorsia) a gambler cop with a $3000 debt.

The fact that each one had an individual reason to steal that money, shaped the whole film noir concept. That is, based on each one’s sin (except maybe for Mike), life didn’t give them no mercy, therefore one mistake in their meticulous plan, could make everything burst into fire.
And to support the crime thriller genre, Kubrick decided to structure his movie using flashbacks, and focusing on each character when coming to take the plan into action. He added the value of time, in order to accentuate on the fact that, one mistake or lateness could ruin everything.

The Killing describes people that weren’t necessarily muggers, but people desperate to leave the country, hoping to improve their current lives, in parallel with what was going on at that time in America; the Cold War. But unfortunately, uncontrollable forces were creating situations that were grotesques, and really dumb, leading to some fatalistic turnovers. Therefore, the suspense is clearly the motif of why The Killing is a good movie. We, spectators, were craving to know how their plan will be put into action. We assisted to the characters, throwing away their integrity and seeing their, sort of, stability slipping away.

The last thing I wanted to add, not as a feminist, but more with an objective point of view, is that women, even in Killer’s Kiss, are pains in the neck. They are wether, real vicious, manipulative, and liars, or passive and totally depending on their men. And I personally think that this image of the woman, will not really change in his future movies.

In a nutshell, The Killing truly embodies, the concept of film noir and is a great tale of how madness only lead to fatalistic ends.

Killer’s Kiss – A Promising Filmmaker

I recently received as a birthday gift, a Stanley Kubrick movie pack, regrouping his twelve films (Fear and Desire not being included), I thus, decided to dedicate my future reviews on his work.

I started then, with his second debut feature Killer Kiss (earlier named Kiss Me, Kill Me). Filmed, in black and white, the camera introduced us to Davy Gordon (Jamie Smith) a prizefighter, waiting at the train station, who began narrating us, his past two days that were pretty intense.

On a beautiful background music composed by Gerald Fried, we are entering the enclosed world of Davy, in which he is trapped, showed through several metaphorical and discrete details, such as the box ring, or a fish bowl. However, there’s Gloria (Irene Kane), a taxi dancer at Pleasureland, who has her apartment’s window in front of his, through which he sometimes, watches her with a strong interest, positioning him self as a voyeur (reminding Hitchcock‘s work). They are both attracted to each other, and this complicated things, when Gloria’s boss, Rapallo (Franck Silvera), obsessed with her, tried to force her to be his.

Being, at first a photographer, we can notice how outstanding are his shots, carefully enlightened, with actors thoroughly positioned. As an amateur, he provided a compelling photography. The whole atmosphere of the film; principally shot at night, filming in alleys, capturing every shadow, has this strong tones of film noir, in a post-World War Two, and Cold War context of fear and corruption. The differences between good and evil are blurred, and Davy found himself a little lost, trying to escape from this world of madness.

It is obvious that this low cost experimental film, was at that time a promising work, but not Kubrick’s best movie. Nevertheless, full of suspense, Killer’s Kiss provided brilliant scenes, just like the fight in the mannequin store (symbolic of crime/thriller movies), and a fantastic and a real pleasure to the eye, photography.