The Caine Mutiny (1954)

Official trailer

A Rust Bucket

Ensign Willie Keith, a rich, sheltered Princeton boy, is assigned to the USS Caine, a battered old destroyer converted into a minesweeper, and he’s appalled. The crew are sloppy, the ship is filthy and the easygoing captain lets everything slide, cheerfully and completely. When a new captain arrives, a strict, by-the-book officer named Philip Francis Queeg, Willie is delighted. Finally, some proper discipline on this ship.

It doesn’t last. Queeg is obsessed with small rules, humiliates his men over trivial mistakes and seems to crack under pressure. The officers start to wonder whether he’s merely strict or dangerously unstable, and the film lets you wonder with them. For a long stretch, you’re not sure whose side to be on. The uncertainty makes the first half gripping. Queeg is unpleasant. Being unpleasant isn’t the same as being unfit, and the film keeps that question open for a long time.

This film grabs me by the collar and doesn’t let go. I’d put Bogart’s Queeg at the very top of his career, and I’d have handed him the Oscar he didn’t get for it. What keeps it at a 9 for me is the stuff around the edges, a limp romance and a couple of stiff performances, but the core of it, a captain coming apart and the officers who let him, is as tense as anything from the fifties.

Edward Dmytryk directed it in 1954, from Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and Stanley Kramer produced. It opens with a solemn title card assuring the audience that there has never been a mutiny in the United States Navy. That tells you how nervous everybody was about the story.

Bogart’s Queeg

Humphrey Bogart plays Queeg, and it’s one of the finest performances of his career. He’s nervous, rigid and petty, constantly rolling two steel ball bearings in his hand when he’s under stress, and his eyes dart around like a cornered animal’s, looking for enemies in every face. He’s also, at times, pitiable, a man who’s been at war too long and is clinging to rules because he can’t trust himself.

Bogart plays against everything audiences expected from him. The tough, sardonic hero of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon is gone. Queeg is weak, frightened and slippery, and Bogart makes him terrifying and heartbreaking in the same breath. He earned an Oscar nomination. It should have been his second win.

I can’t take my eyes off those ball bearings. Bogart never makes a show of them. He just keeps them moving, and the rhythm of his hand tells you how close Queeg is to the edge before he says a word. That’s the kind of small, physical choice I wish more actors trusted.

The Strawberries

The most famous symbol of Queeg’s paranoia is the strawberries. Some leftover strawberries go missing from the wardroom, and Queeg becomes convinced that somebody has a duplicate key to the icebox. He turns the ship upside down in an absurd, exhausting investigation, and he won’t let it go.

It’s funny, and it’s frightening. A captain in the middle of a war, commanding men in dangerous waters, has become consumed by a few missing strawberries. It’s the perfect detail, trivial enough to be absurd and telling enough to reveal a mind coming apart.

Maryk and Keefer

Van Johnson plays Steve Maryk, the ship’s executive officer, a decent, steady, unimaginative career sailor who’s loyal to the Navy and uncomfortable with any hint of rebellion. Fred MacMurray plays Tom Keefer, a clever, cynical novelist serving as communications officer, who starts whispering to Maryk that Queeg is mentally ill.

Keefer is the film’s hidden villain. He’s the one who plants the idea, keeps a record of Queeg’s odd behavior and encourages Maryk to act, and when the moment comes, he’s the one who backs away. MacMurray, who’d played the rotten insurance man in Double Indemnity, is perfectly cast as a charming, articulate coward with a novelist’s gift for explaining himself.

The Typhoon

The crisis comes during a typhoon. The Caine is caught in enormous seas, and Queeg, frozen with fear, refuses to change course or ballast the ship, clinging to fleet orders while the waves threaten to capsize her. Maryk, convinced the ship is about to go down, invokes the Navy regulation allowing an officer to relieve a captain who’s unable to command, and takes over.

The sequence is tense and well staged for its time, all spray, rolling decks, howling wind and shouting men.

Maryk turns her into the wind, and the Caine rides out the storm. He’s saved the ship. And the moment the storm is over, he’s in serious trouble, because relieving a captain is mutiny unless you can prove the captain was unfit.

The Court-Martial

The final third of the film is a court-martial, and it’s gripping. José Ferrer plays Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, a Navy lawyer who takes Maryk’s defense with obvious reluctance. He thinks Maryk and his friends were wrong, and he can see that Keefer used them. He defends them anyway, because it’s his job.

Greenwald’s strategy is ruthless: put Queeg on the stand and let him break. Under gentle, relentless questioning, Queeg rambles about the strawberries, the keys and the conspiracy against him, rolling his steel balls and falling apart in front of the court. I find it hard to watch, and I wouldn’t cut a second of it. Bogart’s collapse on that stand is the reason this film gets a 9.

Maryk is acquitted, and his friends cheer. And the film isn’t finished with them.

Greenwald’s Speech

At the officers’ celebration party, Greenwald turns up drunk and delivers a savage speech.

He tells them he’s ashamed of what he did to Queeg. While they were safe at home or in college, men like Queeg were in the regular Navy, keeping the country ready for war. Queeg deserved their help, not their contempt, and they let him down.

Then he turns on Keefer, calls him the real author of the mutiny and throws a glass of champagne in his face. It’s a shocking scene, a twist that forces the audience to reconsider everything, and Ferrer delivers it with bitter fury.

It’s also a controversial ending. Some viewers find it a deep point about loyalty and service. Others think it lets the Navy off the hook and makes excuses for a captain who nearly got his crew killed. Either way, it’s the reason the film stays in your head.

Wouk’s Novel

Herman Wouk served on destroyer-minesweepers during the Second World War, and his novel draws on that experience. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1952 and was a huge bestseller, and Wouk later adapted the court-martial into a stage play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.

Its script trims the book’s long subplots, including much of Willie Keith’s romance and family drama, and focuses on the Queeg story. The romance that remains, with Willie and a nightclub singer named May Wynn, is the film’s weakest thread, and I’d have cut it to the bone. Every minute ashore is a minute I’d rather spend on the ship.

Old Yellowstain

Early in Queeg’s command, the Caine is ordered to escort landing craft toward a beach under fire. Queeg turns back before reaching the line of departure and drops a yellow dye marker to show the boats where to go, leaving them to cover the rest of the distance alone. The crew start calling him Old Yellowstain behind his back.

It never says for certain whether Queeg was a coward or a cautious captain following his judgment. That ambiguity runs through the whole story. Every incident can be read two ways, and the officers, and the audience, keep choosing the less charitable reading.

The Silent Wardroom

The film’s saddest scene comes before the typhoon. Queeg calls his officers together and, awkwardly, almost pleadingly, asks for their help. He admits he’s made mistakes, that command is hard and that a good wardroom supports its captain. He’s reaching out, in the only way a man like Queeg can.

Nobody says a word. The officers sit in silence and let him twist, and Queeg retreats into suspicion for good. It’s easy to miss the first time through. After Greenwald’s final speech, it becomes what the whole film turns on: the moment the officers could have helped their captain and chose not to. I think it’s the best-written scene in the picture, and it’s the one I’d send a screenwriter to study.

A Few Stiff Joints

In places it’s a little stiff and old-fashioned, with a sentimental score by Max Steiner and some wooden acting from Robert Francis as Willie. The romance subplot drags, and the Navy’s cooperation gives it a slightly official, recruitment-poster sheen in the early scenes.

None of that matters when Bogart is on screen. His Queeg, rolling his steel balls and talking about strawberries, is one of the unforgettable characters of fifties cinema.

Craft Note

Is The Caine Mutiny (1954) worth watching?

The Caine Mutiny is a 9: a gripping naval drama and courtroom thriller with Humphrey Bogart’s shattering Queeg, a tense typhoon, a masterly court-martial and a final speech that turns everything upside down. It loses a point for the soggy romance and some wooden acting, and I’d forgive far worse to watch Bogart roll those steel balls on the witness stand. If I could keep only one of his performances, I’d keep this one.

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