Spoilers: General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) meets with his subordinate General Mireau (George Macready) inside a palatial home turned into headquarters. Broulard tells Mireau that the French want to capture a German position called the "Anthill." Mireau protests, saying that it isn't possible and that his men have already suffered significant casualties. Broulard states that if Mireau takes on this task and succeeds, he will be promoted to a two star general. This perks Mireau's interest and he changes his tune, saying that he believes it is possible to take the position.
Mireau goes to the trenches where we get to see the contrast of the living conditions between the generals and the other officers / enlisted troops. The generals get to spend their time in the palatial homes while everyone else is stuck in the mire. He heads over to Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) to tell him of the plan. Dax protests and Mireau threatens to put him on leave. Dax backs down and states that he will lead his men to battle.
That night, a scout team is sent out led by Lt. Roget (Wayne Morris). It includes two other individuals, one of them a Corporal Paris (Ralph Meeker). They make their way through the barbwire fencing. When they get closer to the German position the third individual is sent off to scout ahead. Roget panics when the individual doesn't return on a timely basis. He randomly throws a grenade and then takes off back to the French line. Paris doesn't want to leave the other man behind so goes off looking for him. He finds him dead, killed by the grenade. He then makes his way back to the French line where he finds Roget writing up a false report about how the situation played out.
After the battle, Mireau and Dax meet with their commanding officer, Broulard. Mireau proposes a court martial of a large number of his men. Broulard and Dax argue that he is targeting too many men and they settle on selecting three men. Dax tries to convince the two generals to charge him for court martial instead. The generals tell him that the officers aren't to blame and that the blame is on the troops for being cowards. Dax then states that he wants to be the men's lawyers. This is allowed even though there is some shock about this.
Three men are selected. One of them is Corporal Paris, selected by Lt. Roget. Two other men are selected, one by random and the other due to his attitude. Dax tries to defend his men against the court martial, but the decision is a forgone conclusion and the men are found guilty and ordered to be shot the next morning.
Dax continues to try and save his men. He is told about the fact that Mireau attempted to fire artillery on the second wave. He gathers the evidence and presents it to Broulard in an attempt to stop the execution. It doesn't work as the men are executed the next day. Dax has Lt. Roget carry out the execution, having learned of what he did.
After the execution, the three officers have another meeting. Broulard reveals that he knows what Mireau did. Mireau protests, but is still relieved from command. Broulard then offer Dax a promotion to general and to lead the command. Dax refuses. Broulard calls Dax an idealist.
What I find so interesting about this movie is the exploration of decisions made by four men.
General Mireau and Colonel Dax both protest that taking on this order was suicide and questioned the why the "Anthill" should be taken. Mireau then gets seduced by a promotion should he succeed. He becomes obsessed by this promotion and quickly loses any concerns he previously had for his men. This betrayal of his troops ends with him likely getting publicly humiliated in the French press (if the movie had gone on for a few more minutes) and maybe even executed in his own court martial. Colonel Dax stood with his men from the battle to the court room. This led to an offer of promotion, but he refuses, deciding to stick with his men instead of being put into a future position where he might feel the need to betray them like Mireau did. In making that decision, he knew that at some point while leading his troops that he might be killed and that he was turning his back on surviving the war if he were to just take the promotion to general.
Then we have the decisions by Lt. Roget and Corporal Paris. Lt. Roget abandons his men and even accidentally kills one of them. His reward is that he is assigned to executive the three men who are found guilty of being cowards. Yet, he is the one who is the coward and in some way you know that everyone else will eventually learn of this fact and will at some point abandon him on the field of battle. Corporal Paris on the other hand did the courageous and went searching for the missing soldier. What was his reward? Death.
Yes, I'm making the assumption that the decisions made by General Mireau, Colonel Dax and Lt. Roget would eventually lead to their deaths if the movie had gone further into the story. And we know that Corporal Paris' decision did lead to his death. But the title of the movie, "Paths of Glory," just gets me to this conclusion. In a way, war leads to death no matter what path you make in life -- be in noble or not. That's my conclusion about the meaning of this movie.
* I suppose another conclusion could be that the three men do survive the war. In that situation, two of them will have that mental knowledge of their failed courage while the third will know that he achieved glory.
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