L'ammutinamento del Caine

The Caine Mutiny works well on so many levels. It is a great insight into navy life, a first rate legal drama, and an unforgettable character study. Jose Ferrer and Fred MacMurray are superb, and indeed so is the entire cast, but the film clearly belongs to Humphrey Bogart's Captain Queeg. It's a real treat to see 'Bogie' in a film where he isn't a gangster or a romantic with a gruff exterior. Bogart spectacularly conveys the sheer complexity of his character: the quirks, the devotion to duty, the demand for perfection, the refusal to accept his own fallibility. It is a truly exceptional performance. Strongly recommended, 9/10.

Director Edward Dmytryk and screenwriter Stanley Roberts, adapting Herman Wouk's novel, certainly didn't set out to make an anti-Navy movie concerning a junkyard Naval ship beset with a paranoid captain, and indeed their "simple" dedication at the end is to the entire United States Navy, yet the plot mechanisms are slanted in that direction even if the handling is not. Beginning the picture with a green "Princeton tiger" and Naval Academy grad attempting to woo a band singer before duty calls was a safe, stolid move, yet Wouk's story manages to cut much wider and deeper than the Hollywood generalities and, once his plot gets cooking, the film is vastly entertaining. Humphrey Bogart is the new by-the-books captain aboard a Naval bottom-feeder, quickly driving his crew and his vessel into the ground with his idiosyncratic behavior. Dymtryk is careful while introducing all the different personalities aboard ship, and he doesn't want us to miss a trick, yet in the film's final stages (after the court martial, when defense attorney José Ferrer has his say), the tone of the picture does an about-face and hopes to show us all sides of the situation. The filmmakers want to have their cake and eat it too, and the resulting epilogue goes down like bad medicine. Still, the performances are first-rate, particularly by Bogart and, in perhaps his finest acting turn, Van Johnson. Seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Bogart as Best Actor, and Tom Tully (playing Commander DeVriess) as Best Supporting Actor. *** from ****

For anyone who thinks all Humphrey Bogart did was play Humphrey Bogart in every film, you have to see THE CAINE MUTINY. This is miles away from any other performance Bogart ever gave. Instead of a tough "stick my neck out for no one" personality Bogart is famous for, his Captain Queeg is a neurotic, paranoid fool. Bogart pulls it off flawlessly. The rest of the cast is also stellar, particularly the underrated Fred MacMurray. This is a wonderful film.

Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) was simply a man who had seen too much of war… With the excitable tendency of rolling a pair of steel balls in his hand, he censures the error of incorrectness on everything but himself falling as an easy victim to the intrigues of self-serving officers who felt that their panicked captain is mentally not suitable to command the ship…

A subplot, seeming to lack common sense, between two young lovers (Robert Francis and May Wynn) only served to lessen the concentration and distract our attention from the real story… Also, at the court-martial, a long trial sequence, was clearly anticlimactic, though it included the film's most tense and unforgettable scene, that of Queeg disintegrating as he pronounced his statement…

But we had noticed it all before, after all, aboard the Navy destroyer, the U.S.S. Caine… We had seen Queeg as a strict disciplinarian and a compulsive, unstable commander, earning, in his limited imagination, the total disregard of both officers and crew… So we knew what would occur when he got on the witness stand…

"The Caine Mutiny" is a splendid character study, a tale of bravery and cowardice at odds with one another… The film received seven Academy Award nominations included one to Humphrey Bogart who delivered a terrific performance

Humphrey Bogart received an Oscar nomination for 'The Caine Mutiny' as the eccentric Captain Queeg who finally collapses under pressure. The story leading up to his downfall is an engrossing one--and more complex than any surface description can convey. That's what makes this such a fascinating movie. Nothing is what it seems. No character is painted in black or white strokes--but beneath the surface lies deception, especially in Lt. Keefer (Fred MacMurray). Usually a lightweight actor, MacMurray delivers one of the film's craftiest performances. So does Van Johnson as the decent executive officer who takes over the controls when Queeg snaps. As many have pointed out, the only true weakness of the film is the attention given to a budding romance between Robert Francis and May Wynn which does nothing to advance the plot. The complex drama ends with a stunning courtroom scene in which Jose Ferrer gets a chance to do some heavy emoting. Max Steiner's score includes a jaunty, catchy main theme but is otherwise not one of his most interesting scores. An excellent film that makes you think how things might have been if--if only...but then there would have been no story. All in all, quite an achievement, well worth your time. The book by Herman Wouk was worth reading too.