Ouragan sur le Caine

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 ****

During Second World War , onboard a small insignificant destroyer ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet a hard-nosed US Naval captain named Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) shows signs of mentally unbalanced , then takes place an event unlike any that the United States Navy has ever experienced . Tom Keefer (Fred MacMurray) takes a discussion to him and puts in Steve Maryk's mind the idea that Queeg can be mental instability that may or not to be slightly unhinged . As when the Ship's Captain panics during a storm is removed from his command by his two Executive Officers (Van Johnson , Robert Francis) when jeopardizes the ship . In an apparent outright act of mutiny the first officer relieves him of command and faces court martial for mutiny . Later on , it happens the court martial naval destroyer officers well defended by an expert solicitor (Jose Ferrer) against a stubborn prosecutor (E.G. Marshall) .

This over-the-top film contains interesting drama , a maritime intrigue , spectacular taking on among crew officers and being beautifully realized . Impressive scenes when happens a storm with a well made ship to scale model . Good performances by all-star-cast as Van Johnson , Fred MacMurray , Jose Ferrer and of course Humphrey Bogart's tour-de-force performance in the climactic courtroom scene was so powerful that it completely captivated the onlooking film technicians and crewmen . After the scene's completion, the company gave Bogart a round of thunderous applause . Besides , an excellent plethora of secondary actors : E.G. Marshall , Claude Akins , Whit Bissell , Edward Franz , Warner Anderson , James Best and Lee Marvin . Interesting screenplay by Stanley Roberts based on the prestigious novel from Herman Wouk who won Pulitzer Prize . Evocative and appropriate music score by the classic Max Steiner with perdurable leitmotif . Colorful cinematography in marvelous Technicolor by Franz Planer .

The motion picture is stunningly directed by Edward Dmytryck , he was a craftsman whose career was interrupted by the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a congressional committee that employed ruthless tactics aimed at rooting out and destroying what it saw as Communist influence in Hollywood . A lifelong political leftist who had been a Communist Party member briefly during World War II, Dmytryk was one of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" who refused to cooperate with HUAC and had their careers disrupted or ruined as a result. The committee threw him in prison for refusing to cooperate, and after having spent several months behind bars , Dmytryk decided to cooperate . Dmytrick's biggest film was ¨The Caine Mutiny¨ , but he also realized another mutiny film titled : ¨Mutiny¨ with Angela Lansbury , Mark Stevens and Patrick Knowles . Edward was an expert on warlike genre as ¨Back to Batan¨ , ¨Battle of Anzio¨ , ¨Young lions¨ and Western as ¨Broken lance¨ , ¨Alvarez Kelly¨ , ¨Warlock¨ among others. Rating : a complete must see , it's recommended for courtroom drama enthusiasts and Bogart fans . Followed by a full-length adaptation, THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL (TV,1988) originally staged as a play , of the court-martial segment from the novel "The Caine Mutiny" by Robert Altman with Brad Davis , Eric Bogosian , Peter Gallaher , Kevin J O'Connor , Jeff Daniels and Michael Murphy .

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.

Historically there were two great United States Naval mutinies. In 1842 a naval sloop, the U.S.S. Somers, had a court martial for three crew members (one, Midshipman Philip Spencer, was the son of Secretary of War John Canfield Spencer), which ended with their being found guilty and hanged. To this day there is debate if Spencer (a troubled youth) was even serious about seizing the "Somers". The other occurred in 1944 at Port Chicago, California, when, a few weeks after a terrible accident that killed many men loading ammunition on a boat, their replacements refused to work under existing unsafe conditions. This led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision - against the workers, who claimed they were not under military law.

But the best known mutiny in the American navy is that on the U.S.S. Caine, during the hurricane that preceded the battle of Okinawa. That this is a fictional mutiny does not seem to attract any attention. THE CAINE MUTINY was a successful novel, Broadway play ("THE CAINE MUTINY COURT MARTIAL") and a great movie. It remains the American equivalent of the mutiny on the H.M.S. Bounty.

The performances of the leads, Bogart, Johnson, MacMurray (his second of three great heels), Ferrer, Tully, and E.G.Marshall are all first rate, as are the supporting cast (which includes Lee Marvin, Claude Atkins, and Jerry Paris - all of whom had quite substantial careers after this film). Only Robert Francis did not have a substantial career after his fine Ensign Keith - he died in a plane crash in 1955.

There are mental images from the film (mostly connected to Bogart's Queeg) that people remember - even spoof. Every time you see some character showing nervous ticks, if he or she pulls out a pair of small metal balls and roll them in their hand, it is a salute to Bogie's originally doing it in THE CAINE MUTINY. And his magnificent moment of success: "the strawberries", and how he proved the theft with geometric precision, remains a signal that the person speaking has too many fixations.

Interestingly, the film makes Queeg better (if still sick) than the play does. When cross examined by Greenwald at the court martial of Maryk and Keith, Queeg is asked about whether or not he overused his right to free transport of liquor and other items from Hawaii to the mainland from the navy. Queeg at first denies it, but when Greenwald says he can bring in (as witnesses) people connected with the sale of the items and the transport of them, Queeg suddenly remembers that he might have. This is not in the film, but it shows that Queeg was not all that clean an officer.

That aside, the impact of the film is still terrific half a century after it was shot. It illustrates that personality flaws frequently causes the problems that affect all of us, and that we need more understanding of each other's problems to avoid the bigger ones. From a case of over-extended battle fatigue, the crew of a warship are driven to accept an act of mutiny against it's captain in an emergency situation. And it almost gets two officers disgraced or hanged.

You're wet behind the ears and quite naive, as you take the opposite of onshore leave, an assignment on the Caine, feelings bottled with disdain, climbing the mast you feel quite sick, and start to heave. Then the Captain is transferred and in sails Queeg, he's the kind of guy who will never concede, leaves the crew with no illusion, there can be just one conclusion, you must do all of the things that he decrees. After some time it seems apparent this guy's ill, as he's unable to enact the role, fulfil, makes decisions that are crazed, lucky the crew remain unscathed, although he does his best to scuttle and to kill.

One of Bogies finest performances.