Visual Weapons: The Battle of Representation How is War Remember Through Visual Art?

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Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general and military theorist, in his book On War, argues that the military is an instrument of state bureaucracy authorized violence. Following this logic, any challenge to the military means that this is a challenge on the state. Although Clausewitz does not mention mutiny within his writing, when these mutinies within the military arise, it is considered a collective resistance or a rebellion from military personnel to recognized state authority, making it different from a strike. Throughout the Great War, mutinies occurred within military structures as an effort to highlight the basic fault lines within society (such as racial issues occurring at the time as empires mobilized their colonial subjects to fight in the war). At times these mutinies were able to push against the limits placed on soldiers during wartime.

The military historian Leonard V. Smith states that “mutinies are concerned with more than just ‘morale’ as ‘morale’ only exists within functioning militaries, which by definition an army or navy in a mutiny is not.” In other words, during the duration of a mutiny, that specific branch of the military disobeying is not considered legitimate within the military. One example of the largest mutiny during the Great War happened in Singapore in February 1915, regarding Indian troops against the British Empire. Rumors circulated regarding the majority Muslim Indian garrison that was said to be dispatched in the Ottoman Empire to fight against people within their own religion, causing a riot within the military. According to Smith, the result of this riot was thirty-two Europeans and fifty Singaporeans killed; the British subsequently tried 202 men, handing out forty-five death sentences and publicly executing twenty three soldiers. Smith goes on to claim that this was a mutiny that was based on racial resentment, and it exposed the racial issues and imperial rule that were affecting soldiers who were not white within the Great War. As these soldiers were non-white colonized subjects fighting for the British Empire, the questioning of the military norms that were set by the British Empire resulted in their execution.

Although some mutinies during the Great War were concerned with racial issues, some were concerned with the issue of morale. Smith argues that passive mutinies are those that are connected to the morale of the soldiers, such as a chaotic retreat from battle, or troops allowing themselves to be taken prisoner, Smith excludes this definition of mutiny from his previous quotation, which implies mutinies are founded on a set of concerns beyond morale (e.g., racial injustices). An example of one of these passive mutinies that will be the focus of this paper is the affair of the corporals at Souain where French soldiers were ordered to take positions captured by the Germans, but during the planned assault many soldiers were immediately killed upon leaving the trenches. After seeing their fellow soldiers die immediately in battle many soldiers refuse to leave the trenches, as the attack was futile. This refusal was considered a mutiny as it directly went against orders to take the enemy’s position.

Paths of Glory is both a novel and book that fictionalizes this true story of the French mutiny that occurred. Colonel Dex, the commanding officer of the 181st Regiment is required by General Mireau, to take the German position “Anthill.” Although it is clear the troops need time to rest before carrying out such an operation, Mireau demands that this position be taken. Dex does not want to proceed to take the “Anthill” because he understands his men are exhausted. Nevertheless, Colonel Dex is forced to start the attack and his regiment fails to take the Anthill due to heavy machine gun firing that forces men to stay within the trenches or risk being immediately killed. General Mireau is filled with anger and wants to court-martial 100 soldiers to be tried for cowardice, as a method to set an example to the rest of the French army. This number is then reduced to three from each company, and these soldiers are made to stand trial. The trial does not allow the defense to show any real evidence to the court to prove that these men were not cowards, and the verdict is quickly decided resulting in the men being executed by firing squad.

Movie poster of “Paths of Glory” 1957.

Both the film and the book deal with the power struggle that comes within the chain of command and how this affects the men that are fighting. Although both address the same events, there are significant differences in the way the audience at the time interpreted this material. Within the film there are slight changes to the story such as the contribution and general character of Colonel Dex. He is a man who is an idealist and has a better moral compass than General Mireau as he is much more concerned with the moral aspect of the men's life versus merely winning the war or being able to take certain positions to advance within the war. This shows the value that he places on human life, and this is a sentiment that he holds throughout the film, especially towards the end when he is defending the men who are on trial and even offers himself to be tried and executed as he was their commanding officer. He questions the higher authority that he takes commands from because they are the ones giving the orders but are not the ones fighting in the battlefield, nor do they see the vast number of men die firsthand as Dex does. An example of this can be seen when General Mireau is in a covered spot watching the battle take place with binoculars. Upon seeing the attack fail and men not coming out one trench, General Mireau orders his own men to be fired at to teach them, a lesson. At this point within both the novel and the film, Mireau is trying to have a sense of control, and only cares about taking the objective rather than the lives of his soldiers. 

Although the novel and the film are both set during World War I, they were released in different decades and despite this gap in time, some sentiments and ideals regarding the war (and wars in general) within the public remain. In Cobb and Kubrick: Author and Auteur (“Paths of Glory” as Novel and Film), author Jesse Bier writes on the difference between the film and the book stating the “film adaptation is both more thematically centered and dramatically decisive than the book. The result is that we have a great movie where we had a neglected, very good novel.” The reasoning behind this difference could lie in the fact that Humphrey Cobb published Paths of Glory in 1935, while Stanley Kubrick released the film in 1957 and the values may have changes within this time gap of the release of the book versus film. 

Continuing with the novel, one opinion of the novel from an article called ‘Paths of Glory’ The War Novel That is Different written by journalist Fanny Butcher, describes the opinion of the novel from her friend, a battery commander during the war. The battery commander questions the actions of General Assolant [Mireau in the film] to make his men who were tired from battle to take an objective no matter what. “Certainly, whatever sense of unreality there is in the book is in the character and actions of General Assolant [Mireau in the film]. The story of the common soldiers and of their officers is stunningly realistic.” For the battery commander, the important insight is that General Assolate could not acknowledge his own mistake; the actions that General Assolant took during the attack and afterwards in the court-martial of his troops is an act that seems unrealistic, even though this is an account being written on events that did really happen. Although this is the case, the battery commander can understand the dynamics of the relationship between the common soldiers and their officers and relates to this depiction as he experienced it as well. The battery commander’s opinion on the book reveals the disparate perception different levels of military have of the same events. 

Humphrey Cobb was a man who was born in Italy to American parents, and eventually worked in the US Office of War and Information, where he wrote overseas propaganda. The story within Paths of Glory is a story that focuses on France and the true story is based on an act that was taken by the French military, but the writer is not French. This outside perspective on another country’s history through a little-known story that is not an outsider’s story to tell, adds controversy to the message that the novel is trying to send. An American criticism of the book is shown in a review from the foremost literary critic of the San Francisco Examiner that states “I have never been tempted to say of any war novel I have read that it is comparable to Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front… it is my duty to report that a novel by Humphrey Cobb, a name new to readers and publishers called Paths of Glory is at least the equal to the Remarque book.” This review was published in March 1936, and it states under the large print of the title that this is a best seller that France suppressed. At the top there is an image of the firing squad that and three men tied up, being sentenced to death. This review garners buzz for the American people to draw them into reading this, during a time where some men who went to war are recounting their days as soldiers and the tensions in Europe are rising every year leading up to the Second World War. 

Amidst the Cold War, the film Paths of Glory was released in 1957 by director Stanley Kubrick, an American film director. It was Kubrick’s fourth featured film and one that he took many liberties with when creating. This anti-war film was released during a time where Europe was more divided than ever, with many countries within Europe under military occupation, and the Warsaw Pact bringing together the Eastern bloc and NATO to strengthen the Western bloc. This was the state of the world Paths of Glory was released into, and the film was frequently banned and censored during this time. Examples of this include its removal from the Berlin Film Festival and it being banned within the United States military establishment. Additionally, the French were hesitant to allow the film to be shown as this event was still a source of embarrassment, and an event that they wanted to keep away from the public eye. When the film was first released, the Algerian war was taking place and there was already growing criticism of the war within France. As this film touched on a part of France’s history that they are ashamed of they did not want to add to this growing criticism that was already happening. The film was finally released in 1975 in France but was not seen in Paris for a few years after the release.

Still from “Paths of Glory” (1957).

In the article “French Delay Showing Films on Touchy Topics” by Nan Robertson, she talks about this sensitivity that officials had on topics dealing with the army, police, and government’s roles during times of war. Robertson’s article was published in March of 1975, and she states, “until last week any French of foreign film could be banned for ‘reasons of state’ or if it were deemed likely to ‘disturb the public order.’” Not only a week prior was when the French ended their political censorship of movies. During that time, The French never had an official guideline for the political censorship of movies and never officially prohibited Paths of Glory but rather distributors found it preferable to not show the movie, upon its release given the tense years of the Algerian war was taking place. This decision of French officials to stop put an end to the “murky official guidelines” they had in place on censorship on political films coincided with the end of the Vietnam war. Before this decision, in May 1968, France saw mass protests, nationwide strikes and battles within the streets as students protested the Vietnam War, Charles de Gaulle, and social conditions. These mass protests were said to push France into the modern world. This feeling of anti-war sentiment is one that transformed France culturally and socially, rather than politically. The people of France challenged not only the wars, but also gender norms and from this the woman’s liberation movement and gay rights movement rose out of this social shift. 

As France was still taking part in wars such as the Algerian war, a war that is a fight for independence from a colonial power, the government wanted to repress any films that dealt with a topic of France's shameful past in past wars. In A Film Highly Offensive to Our Nation, film critic James Fenwick writes “The belief was that such material had to be suppressed to avoid any further crises in public morality and maintain social order, both in France and in Algeria. This became the prevailing attitude, with the French government able to ban any film, foreign or domestic, due to ‘reasons of state.’” In other words, governments use censorship as a method of control and in this case, France believed that it was beneficial for the government to keep this material away from the public. By censoring this material, French citizens would not make direct comparisons of the mutinies that they were seeing on films to any of the wars that were currently taking place. Paths of Glory was one of the many films censored, as well as Jean-Luc Godard’s Petit Soldat, which was released in 1963 and is a film on the Algerian war of independence. From the perspective of the French government, having these films accessible to the public would cause even more questioning of their government and country amidst the Cold War. Since countries during the Cold War within the Western bloc believed in the Domino Theory this was their reasoning for going into other countries to protect those citizens dwelling in the area to being under a communist regime, such as Vietnam. Additionally, as France was taking place in wars during the time, it was crucial that the French military was not being viewed in any way that would undermine the military or government’s decisions.

With this information regarding censorship within arts (e.g., Film) the questions that arises are as follows: Who controls how we remember these historical events? How do we remember these events? And lastly how are these events seen within arts? According to film critic James Fenwick, Paths of Glory was subjected to controversy shortly after its release as Cobb’s sought out a cinematic adaptation with screenwriter Sidney Howard in the late 1930s. Paramount was cautious as “financing of the project depended on the French government’s acceptance of the script, with Paramount unwilling ‘to take issue with the foreign government on the dramatic premise in the play.’” The result from this was the French government not sanctioning the script and threatening to ban all Paramount films within the country. This hostility was one that came from the critique against the French military that this movie was presenting, as well as the events of the Great Depression causing civil unrest. One idea that was presented was to make up an imaginary army that represented a fictional nation, but Cobb and Howard refused to do this. 

For Kubrick, his effort to take Paths to Glory from a novel to the screens succeeded, but he experienced similar problems in production that Cobbs experienced when trying to create a film adaptation. Harris-Kubrick pictures were able to get enough of a budget to film the movie due to the film’s controversial nature until the intervention of Kirk Douglas, one of Hollywood’s leading stars of the 1950s. Douglas believed Paths of Glory to be a worthwhile film and pushed the making of the film, despite the controversial nature and convinced producers that the natural of the film would work in its favor, providing higher viewership. Film researcher James Fenwick states this desire to push the controversial nature of the film while disregarding the sensitivities of the French is an example of a clash of cultures, where the insiders (the French) are excluded from their lived history and experienced by the outsider (the Americans) with an insensitivity to the insider’s history. In addition, all the filming took place in within Germany, historically France’s enemy after the Great War. The film with regards to the French, although it was a piece of their history and this controversy led to the censorship and reaction of the French government upon its release. 

In the article In France, It’s Vive le Cinéma of Denial, Carole Scotta, a producer of Entre les Murs touches on this repression and censorship stating, “It took a long time for politicians here to admit France bore responsibility for the years of collaboration during World War II, and still Sarkozy likes to say we were a nation of resistance. The most successful films in this country reflect our collective projection of France as we wish it to be. We prefer to live in a dream.” In other words, the decision that France has made in censoring films is a conscious decision to ensure that the country is being depicted in a light that is on par with the idea that they have of themselves. This control of image of the country is not unique to France, as other countries do the same. Governments may not be able to right their wrongs, but they are able to suppress information or stretch the truth to uphold a certain image of the country. 

Overall, mutinies were one of the few ways that soldiers could use action to show their displeasure with issues and limits that were placed on them during this time. Paths of Glory shows only one moment within the Great World War in which a mutiny occurred as soldiers used their own logic rather than follow orders that would result in major causalities and the consequences that these soldiers had to pay with their lives. Paths of Glory is a both a novel and a film that highlights a true story of a mutiny within the French military as well as the punishment these soldiers experienced, but the story itself is told through the lens of an American soldier. Humphrey Cobbs created a book that brought a story that, may have remained unknown for quite some time. A few decades later, Stanley Kubrick brought this story to the big screens, during a period where censorship of anti-war rhetoric material occurred frequently. This controversial nature of the novel and film come from the fact that this is a story of French history that is presented to an American audience with little regard for French feelings and sentiments. Would this film have been as controversial if the filmmaker had been French? Censorship of this film occurred for many different reasons but one of the major reasons being that France was taking part in the Algerian war and did not want their citizens to not support what they were doing within Algeria. France ended their ban of foreign films in March 1975, this ban included any movies that they believed would cause civil unrest or disorder. Countries resort to censorship of materials to maintain control with the country and control political unrest that can come from a government’s controversial decisions.