Paths of Glory, shot by Stanley Kubrick in 1957 (when he still cared about human affairs), is one of the most unillusioned films about war made in this or any other country. Derived from the French soldier mutinies in the Vimy Ridge in World War I, the screenplay by Calder Willingham and Jim Thompson is a paradigm of military disfunction. An ambitious general, intrigued by an offer of promotion, leads an already battle-weary battalion on a suicide mission. But the battalion falls back from their advance. Enraged, the general orders three men shot for cowardice as examples for his entire army. During the battle and the trial, Kubrick details the fail-safe inefficiencies and inhumanities of the military tactics and political strategies, and troop and individual motivation, which prevent an intelligent officer (played by Kirk Douglas) from taking moral action. Because the dynamics of the military are merely extensions of politics, the film is an indictment of the general social situation it depicts as well. Kubrick's camerawork brilliantly expresses the varying cultural vacuums in which his characters trek, from the vertiginous ballrooms of the military elite to the squat squalor of the trenches. And the acting he evokes from a cast largely composed of has-beens and second-rates is exemplary.

Silence Has No Wings, a sensitive and subtle Japanese film directed by Kazuo Kuroki, is a surrealist portrait of post-war Japan. Paranoia dominates the world it depicts, caused by the rise of the new middle class. But the film itself is quiet and controlled.