War... ever present throughout most of history, it is the ultimate shame of mankind, an expression of our most violent and destructive impulses on a grand scale, capable of destroying civilizations and reshaping the global map. Instigated by the elites - the royalty, politicians, businessmen and financiers who often profit from it - it is fought by the common man, the disposable masses flung into the firing line as pawns in a game of chess. Depictions of warfare in cinema have ranged from jingoistic, patriotic propaganda movies, in which the good guys and their enemies are simplistically represented and the cause is always just and noble, to more nuanced meditations on the effects of warfare on mankind. Stanley Kubrick's 1957 masterpiece starring Kirk Douglas, Paths of Glory, is re-released in cinemas this week, and remains a powerful anti-war treatise on the folly and hubris of World War 1 in which arrogant commanding officers forced untold thousands to their deaths in the trenches and the no man's land which lay beyond. To mark the return of Paths of Glory to our cinema screens here are 10 of the very best anti-war movies of all time, classic films which bring to light war in all its physical horror and psychological trauma and question the lies and deceptions of those who would wage it.
