THE CAINE MUTINY

The American public really went overboard for this story in the early 1950s.  It started off as a bestselling Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in 1952, then it was adapted first into a play in 1953, then into this film in 1954 (which was nominated for several Oscars), as well as a TV film in 1955.

It's hard to judge the quality of the novel from what we have here, which is a highly condensed version which concentrates on the character of Lieutenant Commander Queeg, played by Humphrey Bogart.

Getting the cooperation of the US Navy was time-consuming given that (understandably) they weren't keen on the idea of a fictional madman as captain of a US navy vessel in World War 2, so the screenplay equivocates as to whether Queeg is a mentally ill paranoid or merely someone suffering from battle fatigue. 

And the film also goes out of its way to emphasise that the US Navy had never experienced a mutiny.

Bogart received his third and final Oscar nomination for his performance which is fair enough even if it's a pale imitation of a similar one he had already delivered in a much better film, 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'.

Not that this is a bad film.  The screenplay does a good job of converting what sounds like a sprawling novel into a tight drama, which Edward Dmytryk directs competently.   

That being said I can't say that it's all that compelling.  It doesn't help that the USS Caine is a rust bucket that doesn't seem to be contribuitng much to the war effort.  There's a somewhat baffling scene (to me anyway) where Queeg displays cowardice when the Caine is escorting some landing craft as part of an invasion of a small Pacific island.  The scene is so lowkey that I thought it might be a training exercise.

The other problem is that the second-in-command Maryk is a dull character played by a dull actor (Van Johnson) so that there is no great dramatic tension in their confrontations (we're certainly not in 'Crimson Tide' territory in this respect).

The most interesting character besides Queeg is Keefer, the third-in-command, who is a bit of an intellectual (he's writing a novel in his spare time) and who is never short of a flippant wisecrack.

He comes out of this tale as the villain because he fails to fully back Maryk at his court-martial. As one of life's contrarians I beg to differ.  After all, he is the first to realise that Queeg is unfit to command, and if it wasn't for him sharing this observation with Maryk the chances are that Maryk wouldn't relieve Queeg of command during the typhoon that hits them, in which case the Caine would almost certainly have foundered.

Keefer is played by Fred MacMurray.  I'm as big a fan of his as anyone (how could I not be, given that he features prominently in two of my favourite Billy Wilder films, 'The Apartment' and 'Double Indemnity') but here I feel he is miscast (sorry Fred, but I don't buy you as a budding author and all-round smart Alec).

I'm a sucker for any courtroom drama so I enjoyed the court-martial scenes which are well constructed.  The climactic moment when Queeg loses self-control and thereby incriminates himself of course brings to mind 'A Few Good Men' where Jack Nicholson's character does very much the same thing.   

A couple of times in the film it is intimated that the penalty for committing mutiny is death by hanging, which I found shocking.  I know that mutiny is not the sort of thing to be treated lightly but even so.  Thankfully in José Ferrer, Maryk has a highly effective defence lawyer.

So this is some way from being a top-notch Bogart film, but it is certainly a watchable one.