The Caine Mutiny (film)
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| The Caine Mutiny | |
|---|---|
 original film poster |
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| Directed by | Edward Dmytryk |
| Produced by | Stanley Kramer |
| Written by | Herman Wouk (novel) Stanley Roberts |
| Starring | Humphrey Bogart José Ferrer Van Johnson Fred MacMurray Robert Francis Tom Tully E.G. Marshall |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 24, 1954 (USA) |
| Running time | 124 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
- This is about the film. For the 1951 novel see The Caine Mutiny
The Caine Mutiny is a 1954 film drama set during World War II, starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by Edward Dmytryk. It is based on the 1951 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Herman Wouk The Caine Mutiny.
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[edit] Synopsis
The tale is of a mutiny aboard a fictitious World War II U.S. Navy destroyer minesweeper, the U.S.S. Caine (DMS-18), provoked by the ongoing tensions between a by-the-book, battle-fatigued, isolated and paranoid captain, Lieutenant Commander Philip F. Queeg (Bogart), and his officers. The Caine's officers include the dedicated but troubled executive officer Lieutenant Stephen Maryk (Van Johnson); the cynical, duplicitous communications officer (and aspiring novelist) Lieutenant Thomas Keefer (Fred MacMurray); and the callow, young assistant communicator Ensign Willie Keith (Robert Francis), whose coming of age from spoiled society brat to mature seaman and combat veteran is half the framework in which Queeg's difficulties are viewed. The other half is Maryk, who was formerly a loyal executive officer who slowly comes to terms with Keefer's continuous, well-measured criticisms of Captain Queeg's mental state and competence for leadership.
After several shipboard incidents ranging from petty (Queeg's angry order to search the ship to uncover who stole a quart of strawberries from the kitchen) to dangerous (Queeg's decision to prematurely terminate the Caine's protective escort for a group of landing craft during an invasion), Keefer persuades Maryk to study Navy regulations regarding relieving an incapacitated captain of command. Later, during a violent typhoon, Maryk takes over from Captain Queeg after Queeg makes several decisions– not to take on ballast during the storm and not to steer into the waves–that nearly capsize the Caine.
When they return to port, Maryk faces a court martial for mutiny. Proceedings do not go well, as the self-serving Keefer is careful to deny any complicity. Eventually the defense counsel, Lieutenant Barney Greenwald (José Ferrer), has no choice but to resort to calling Queeg to the stand. Queeg proceeds to completely discredit himself with his own paranoic, unstable testimony. After Maryk is acquitted, they celebrate at a hotel. A drunk Greenwald crashes the party and throws a drink in Keefer's face, denouncing him as the real instigator of the mutiny. After he leaves, the other officers, having just heard about Keefer's false testimony, walk out on him, leaving him alone in the room. Keith returns to military duty aboard another ship under the command of Captain DeVriess, the previous captain of the Caine.
[edit] Awards and response
The movie provided Humphrey Bogart with the next-to-last great role of his acting career and a comeback for Dmytryk, formerly one of the Hollywood Ten who first declined but subsequently agreed to speak of his past as a member of the American Communist Party.
The film received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Humphrey Bogart), Best Supporting Actor (Tom Tully as Captain DeVriess, the first captain of the Caine), Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording, Best Film Editing, and Best Dramatic Score (Max Steiner). While Bogart had won a previous Academy Award for The African Queen), in this case, he lost to Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. Dmytryk was also nominated for a Directors' Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures.
[edit] Production
The Navy initially objected to the film's depiction of a mentally unbalanced man as the captain of one of its ships and the word "mutiny" in the film's title. But after the script was altered somewhat, the Navy cooperated with Columbia Pictures by providing ships, planes, combat boats, and access to Pearl Harbor and the port of San Francisco. Following the opening credits, the epigraph states that the film's story is non-factual. No ship named USS Caine ever existed, and no Navy captain has been relieved of command at sea under Articles 184-186: "There has never been a mutiny in a ship of the United States Navy. The truths of this film lie not in its incidents but in the way a few men meet the crisis of their lives."
[edit] Director
Director Edward Dmytryk spent time in prison as one of the Hollywood Ten, writers and filmmakers sent to prison for refusing to answer questions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities about their ties to the Communist Party. After his release, Dmytryk spoke of his own Party past (a very brief membership in 1945, and pressure from other members to insinuate Communist propaganda into his work) and identified 26 other Party members, in a second appearance before the House committee. He spent some time in England, and Stanley Kramer hired him to direct a few low-budget films before handing Dmytryk The Caine Mutiny. The film's success resurrected Dmytryk's career once and for all. He went from there to direct, among others, Raintree County, The Young Lions (with Marlon Brando as a Nazi officer), a remake of the Marlene Dietrich classic The Blue Angel, and The Carpetbaggers, among others. Dmytryk died in 1999.
[edit] Trivia
- The Caine was played by the Navy destroyer-minesweeper USS Thompson (DD-627/DMS-38). This ship was not a 4-stack World War I era ship like the vessel in the novel because at the time the film was made, all such vessels had been scrapped.
- The ship was named for a fictitious Navy Commander, Arthur Wingate Caine, who died in battle while serving aboard another fictitious ship, the USS Jones. The Jones—portrayed briefly by the minesweeper USS Surfbird (AM-383)—is the ship that the Caine races back to port against during a minesweeping exercise early in the film. Admiral Halsey's unnamed flagship was portrayed by the USS Kearsarge (CV-33), a post-War aircraft carrier launched in 1946; a number of World War II-era fighter planes were placed atop the flight deck for filming purposes.
- Michael Caine (born Maurice Micklewhite) changed his name from Michael Scott when he first became an actor. He happened to be speaking to his agent in a telephone box in London's Leicester Square, who suggested Caine change his name again. His agent insisted that he come up with a new name immediately, because another actor was already using "Michael Scott." Looking around for inspiration, he noted that The Caine Mutiny was being shown at the Odeon Cinema, and so he decided to change his name to Michael Caine.
- The supporting character of Ens. Barney Harding—whose strumming a ukelele singing a sarcastic song, "Yellowstain Blues," after Capt. Queeg inexplicably ordered a dye marker thrown off the stern during the invasion incident—was played by Jerry Paris. Paris later became familiar as the wiseguy next-door-neighbor dentist Jerry Helper on The Dick Van Dyke Show—and as a successful television director whose credits included numerous episodes of The Odd Couple and Happy Days.
- According to MovieMistakes.com, no ship in the U.S. Navy during World War II was capable of traveling in a circle tight enough to cut its own tow line, as the Caine was depicted doing.
- After the novel's success, the court-martial sequence in the book was adapted into a full-length Broadway play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, by its original author Herman Wouk. The play, directed by actor Charles Laughton, was a success on the stage in 1954, opening almost exactly five months before the release of the film The Caine Mutiny, which covers nearly the whole book, not just the court-martial scene. The stage version starred Lloyd Nolan as Queeg, John Hodiak as Maryk, and Henry Fonda as Greenwald. It has been revived twice on Broadway, and was presented on television in 1955, as a live presentation, and in 1988, as a made-for-television film.
- The novel goes into a great deal more detail about Willie Keith's experiences both in midshipman school and in his early relationship with his amorata May Wynn. After the court-martial, he returns to the Caine and we see his development into a tempered, capable Naval officer, which is barely hinted at in the film.
- Mad Magazine presented one of its earliest film satires on this, titling it "The Cane Mutiny, or, The Walking Stick Rebellion." This piece was later included in The Bedside Mad.
