Dutch postcard for Metropole Palace, Den Haag (The Hague). Photos: 20th Century Fox.
Fredric March,
June Lang,
Warner Baxter,
Lionel Barrymore, and
Gregory Ratoff in
The Road to Glory (Howard Hawks, 1936). Caption: We, 5 stars, are represented in the overwhelming Fox 20th Century millions-film work
The Way to Glory. European premiere in the new glorious Metropole Palace, Laan van Meerdervoort, telephone 39.22.44.
Set in the French trenches, the WWI melodrama
The Road to Glory (Howard Hawks, 1936) was co-written by William Faulkner and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck. In 1916, somewhere in the front in France in World War I, the 5th Company in the 2nd Battalion of the 39th Regiment created by Napoleon Bonaparte and led by the tough Captain Paul La Roche (Warner Baxter) receives among the replacements, Lieutenant Michel Denet (Fredric March) and private Morin (Lionel Barrymore). Hard-drinking Captain La Roche delivers the same hollow speech to each wave of fresh soldiers assigned to his command, only to see them senselessly slaughtered by the Germans. When Lt. Denet meets the nurse Monique La Coste (June Lang), who is Capt. La Roche's mistress but he does not know, they fall in love with each other. When Captain La Roche sees the old Private Morin in his inspection, La Roche identifies him as his father using a fake identity. Meanwhile, the 39th Regiment receives orders to go to the trenches, attack the German lines and install a telephone in the front to guide the artillery. As men are killed and replaced, jaunty Lieutenant Denet becomes more and more somber. In a battle, La Roche is blinded. His father helps him direct artillery fire at the front, but both men are slain. Although he has won the girl and La Roche's command, Denet is forced to give the same pointless speech to his doomed recruits.
Claudio Carvalho at IMDb: "
The Road to Glory is another great anti-war movie that shows the barbarian life in the trenches in WWI, using a dramatic triangle of love and father-son relationship in a time where the leader headed the attack and soldiers were just numbers. The direction of Howard Hawks and the screenplay are excellent, using adequate pace and lines such as "why do they have to die?" or the contradictory "the fear is just in the imagination" to support the anti-war message of the feature. The scenarios and cinematography depict the horror of the insanity of war in the bloody trenches. The performances of Warner Baxter, in the role of a harsh commander; Fredric March in the role of the ambiguous lieutenant divided between love and loyalty; Lionel Barrymore, in the role of a stubborn old soldier; and the gorgeous June Lang in the important role of a nurse also divided by her moral obligation with her lover and real love, are wonderful and credible." Karl Williams at AllMovie: "Although Hawks had directed an earlier film of the same title,
The Road to Glory (1936) was not a remake of that picture, but of a popular French war movie,
Les Croix des Bois (1932), from which studio executives cannibalized combat footage for use in the new version."
Sources: Claudio Carvalho (IMDb), Karl Williams (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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