1954 Military Drama
From Columbia Pictures
Directed by Edward
Dmytryk
Starring
Humphrey Bogart
José Ferrer
Van Johnson
Fred MacMurray
Robert Francis
May Wynn
Tom Tully
E. G. Marshall
Arthur Franz
Lee Marvin
Claude Akins
(Readers: I just published this posting on June 21 but some gremlin deleted it from the blog. Thankfully there was a backup in another system so I am able to republish now for those who didn't read it and to get it back in my blog history.)
Every few years I get a yen to watch my two favorite naval movies, Mister Roberts and The Caine Mutiny. They make a terrific double bill. Two bits of commonality are both have strong male casts and neither shows a single bit of combat despite taking place on ships. One difference, certainly, is that this film is all drama while Mister Roberts has a great deal of comedy mixed in with its drama and sentiment.
Producer Stanley Kramer, always fond of message films or at least ones that strongly drive a point home, secured the screen rights from author Herman Wouk before his 673-page novel won the Pulitzer Prize. I read the book in a high school American Lit class and remember being completely absorbed in it. One thing I always loved about Wouk's works is that he puts in the time to fully flesh out his characters.
A film that grapples with
the moral complexities and human conditions of WWII opens with newly-graduated
Ensign Willie Keith (Francis) who is assigned to the USS Caine, a
destroyer-minesweeper. He is introduced to the executive officer, Steve
Maryk (Johnson), and communications officer Tom Keefer (MacMurray) after giving
the ship and its men the once-over. He finds the sloppiness of all to be
an affront. He then meets Commander DeVriess (Tully) and quickly comes to
the conclusion that his stay in the Navy is not going to be what he thought it
would be.
Whatever Keith and others thought of their leader, it would be nothing compared to his replacement, Captain Philip McQueeg (Bogart) whose behavior immediately becomes suspect. He advises his officers that he is strictly by-the-book and that they are well-advised to know that there are four ways to do things... the right way, the wrong way, the Navy way and his way.
In no time at all, everyone notices that things are amiss with Capt. Queeg. Keefer, who appears to be no stranger to an emotional misstep himself, is the first to articulate his feelings. He tells Maryk that he thinks Queeg suffers from a yellow streak, appears tired and unbalanced and is paranoid. We think so too. We all question his severe headaches and how he pulls out two steel balls from his pocket and rolls them in his hand at the same time that adrenalin hijacks his functions. His deer-in-the-headlights look says all.
We know Maryk agrees with Keefer not so much because he says so but because we can tell by Maryk's own perplexing looks when he's around the captain. Maryk decides to keep a log on the captain.
There are a number of incidents that show Queeg's oddball behavior but nothing more so than his awakening all his officers in the middle of the night to quiz them on who ate the rest of the frozen strawberries that had been refrigerated. He looked like a man possessed with madness. The men were on high alert.
It is when the ship is in the middle of a typhoon that Maryk relieves Queeg of his duties and takes over command. He no longer needs to be convinced while he readies himself to relief the captain of his command. Maryk believes believes Queeg's commands will sink the Caine.
Maryk is court-martialed for his mutiny. He is brought to trial and Lt. Barney Greenwald (Ferrer), jokingly or otherwise, says he is not sure which side he will work for. He's a pitbull type, no doubt in anyone's mind, and Maryk and others are delighted when he becomes their defense attorney.
Things not going well for Maryk or Greenwald but no one saw the treachery coming from Keefer, who disavows any of his machinations in the unfolding events and in fact says he doesn't think Queeg is crazy. It seems a terrible setback.
But then Queeg testified and the wily Greenwald didn't take long at all to get him to display the behavior that would lead to an acquittal for Maryk.
After the trial the officers and others gather in a large room to drink and luxuriate in the headiness of the win when a drunken Greenwald comes wobbling in. His intention is to set the record straight as he sees it. He wants a shift and he... well, check out this scene at the end.
At this point, doesn't the film ask an audience to take sides? I feel it does. Does one
stand on the side of legally wrong or morally right?
Regardless of Queeg's past or current motives or accomplishments, it
looked like the typhoon was going to win.
With just a couple of exceptions, this movie is one of the best to come out of the 50's. I don't want to end on a down note so let's mention the exceptions first. Columbia head Harry Cohn and producer Stanley Kramer did battle over the proposed length. Kramer wanted to incorporate back stories on the lead characters, the way Wouk had done to his book. All agreed that would add an hour to the film's length's... Kramer didn't care. Cohn did. He wanted none of his films to exceed two hours. I, of course, think stories are stronger when he know more about the characters beyond what they're currently dealing with.
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| Johnson, Francis, MacMurray hashing it out |
Willie Keith was the lead character in Wouk's novel as he is in the film. Willie is the only
character that comes with more data. We learn he comes from wealth, that
his widowed mother coddles him and that he is in love with a singer seemingly
more than she is in love with him. The problem is... who cares? All
extraneous but one ponders why didn't we learn more about Queeg? Wouldn't his background been of any particular interest?
The ship floundering in the ocean, in a standoff with that tycoon, looks a wee bit like a kid's ship in a bathtub. And how come the men stood up so well? Ok, they fell once but come on, they would have pretty much been on the floor the whole time in this weather disaster. I'm jus' sayin'. But let's get to that good stuff.
There was clarity and vigor in abundance. The portrayal of shipboard life seemed to be on the mark and so said my naval man father. It gave a valuable look into male temperaments,
bravery and
cowardice, loyalty and treachery and the angst involved when taking
orders from a man one doesn't respect. Watching it makes me feel as
though I've enlisted.
I could gush (oh?) about
the acting, especially that of Bogart and MacMurray. The former just
blows me away when he plays someone who has a screw loose.
He did that the best in the fabulous In a Lonely Place and his
Capt. Queeg is in there as well. Bogie had just about the most expressive
male eyes in the business and when they convey loosing it, he is truly
terrifying. I regard The Caine Mutiny as one of the
half dozen best acting jobs of the actor's distinguished career.
He was not the first choice to play Queeg. Richard Widmark was nearly ready to start production but producer Kramer (who would later use Widmark in Judgment at Nuremburg) insisted on Bogie who had also brought his production company to Columbia for other projects. Naysayers squawked that Bogart was too old for the part.
MacMurray impressed me in unpleasant roles (Double Indemnity and The Apartment come immediately to mind) and this is one of those. Keefer believed he had an insider's take on human behavior because he was a writer which allowed him to take the lead on exposing Queeg's mental instability. But being so deceptive and unscrupulous made him the film's true villain.
Johnson is excellent at
showing a man's distress and sense of duty without ever grandstanding.
The part is not as showy as any of the other leads but it was a good role for Johnson who was looking to distance himself from his sugary MGM musicals
and comedies. In that he succeeded. One notices the scarring on his
face which was unusually covered with heavy makeup in his films. He got
it as the result of a serious auto accident in 1943 and the consensus on the set was
that showing it would bring some authenticity to his role.
Ferrer got to involved in two of the film's best scenes... the courtroom trial and the verbal melee at the finale. That strong voice and no-nonsense manner always made him a force in his work. His speech in that finale is powerful stuff.
 |
| Ferrer, Johnson, Bogart; the great court scene |
Francis was likely
handed the choice role because he was a brand new Columbia contractee and they
were itching to showcase his handsomeness in a perfect way. It worked for
me. He was all he needed to be as Willie Keith. As I outlined in an earlier piece, plans for Francis were short-lived because he died in a plane he was
piloting in 1955.
Billing has little to do with screen time, apparently. Bogie doesn't come on screen for the first half hour and Ferrer doesn't appear until the last half hour. And they are billed first and second. Francis, on the other hand, is billed fifth and he has the most screen time of any of the principals. The film opens and closes with him.
Donna Lee Hickey was signed to play Francis' love interest, May Wynn. She liked her character's name so much that, like actors Gig Young and L.Q. Jones before her, she took it as her stage name. Her next movie was also with Francis, They Rode West, and the studio manufactured a romance.
The film marked a shining comeback for director Edward Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten and former communist member, who went to jail for contempt of congress and for lying under oath. But Hollywood is a forgiving community and producer Kramer was a lefty who espoused his own causes. Dmytryk had a name for working fast and not putting up with a lot of nonsense from his casts and Kramer found him perfect.
It took 15 months to get The Caine Mutiny before the cameras because the studio very much needed the Navy's assistance and the Navy didn't want to give it. It had not been happy with the novel or the play before the film came out. Ultimately everyone was made happy enough because production proceeded with the proviso that the following be splashed across the screen after the opening credits:
There has never been a mutiny in a ship of the U.S. Navy. The truths of this film lie not in its incidents but in the way a few men meet the crises of their lives.
I wonder if that's true. I've heard it's not but one has to go back to the mid 1800's.
The Caine Mutiny became one of the most profitable films in Columbia's history. And a fine film it is, too.
Here's the best scene:
Next posting:
A movie biography
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