Ban This Sick Filth! Films That Fell Foul Of The Censors, Part 2
Three more films that suffered the cruellest of cuts.
Paths Of Glory
Year: 1957
Banned: 1957-74
Where?: France, Switzerland, Belgium
It’s easy to undersand Stanley Kubrick’s concerns over the fallout from A Clockwork Orange. It’s quite another to see how anyone could take exception with his excellent anti-war movie.
Paths Of Glory starred Kirk Douglas as a French general whose failure to complete an impossible objective leads to the scapegoating, courts-martial and execution of three of his men.
Made after the Second World War but set during the First, and clearly attacking the insanity of war rather than specific individuals, it must have come as quite a shock to Kubrick when the French military elite sought to have Paths Of Glory banned from continental Europe.
So severe was the reaction that United Artists simply decided not to release the film in France. Not that this did anything to prevent protests in Belgium, where the picture was pulled until it could be repacked with a placatory prologue explaining that this was “an isolated case in contrast with the historical gallantry of French soldiers.”
The film also upset the Swiss who would not screen it until 1970. Four years later,
a French government anti-censorship pledge meant that a native of movie-lovers finally got to see a movie worth loving.
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