Of course, there are always people and critics who will whiff on even the greatest works of art. Bosley Crowther, the ridiculously bad film critic for the New York Times, wrote:
We feel that Mr. Kubrick--and Mr. Douglas--have made a damaging mistake in playing it in colloquial English, with American accents and attitudes, while studiously making it look as much as possible like a document of the French Army in World War I. The illusion of reality is blown completely whenever anybody talks.
This sort of comment, by Crowther, is akin to those many bad critics make in defense of subtitling over dubbing foreign films. Anyone who is hung up on the American accents of an American-made film, wherever it is set, simply is invalidating their worth as a critic of note.
Paths Of Glory is a great film, made by a great director at the start of a career that is nonpareil in American cinema. The Criterion Collection has also done one of its best jobs, in recent years, of restoring this classic, and surrounding it with features that are worthy of the art they comment upon. War may be hell, but this release is Kubrickian heaven. If you’ve never seen the film before, or merely want to see it again, this is the release to engage.
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