The Caine Mutiny

I really love having video on demand on my cable service. Not only does it give me new episodes of The Wire six days early, I can also find something to watch no matter what my mood. The other night I flipped through the free movie listing and found this 1954 classic tale of men at war and more in conflict with each other than the enemy–there’s only one battle scene and even that shows the Japanese only through the arrival of shots from their shore-based batteries.

The Caine Mutiny is primarily set on the minesweeper Caine in the Pacific Theater during the second half of WWII. Made from Herman Wouk’s bestselling novel, the movie was written by Stanley Roberts (who also adapted Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman for the big screen) and directed by Edward Dmytryk, in his first job after spending several months in prison as one of the Hollywood 10 who refused to cooperate with the DC McCarthyism witchhunts of the early ’50s.

Producer Stanley Kramer (yes, the one who not longer after this became a very successful director) gave Dmytryk a first class cast. Toplining are Humphrey Bogart as the martinet Queeg, Van Johnson as the mutineer Maryk, Fred MacMurray (still a serious actor who had not yet turned to Disney tripe nor the father of My Three Sons) as the creepy comms officer Keefer and Jose Ferrer as Maryk’s Navy attorney plus Robert Francis in a very good performance as naive, audience POV character Ensign Willie Keith. Sadly Francis died in a plane crash the year after this was released.

The Caine is a slack ship, the crew just as sloppy and worn down, as Keith arrives fresh from training for his first posting. Shortly thereafter Queeg takes command and he’s unwilling to permit such unbecoming behavior and state of repair. We see him in a series of questionably petty decisions and confrontations, none truly favorable to him, climaxing in a ship-wide hunt for a purported food locker key used to abscond with a quart of strawberry ice cream.

Maryk, Keefer and Keith surreptitiously ride over to the newly-arrived fleet commander’s carrier, armed with Maryk’s diary of Queeg’s behaviors, to see if Admiral Halsey will  relieve their captain. They back out at the last minute, on Halsey’s doorstep, after Keener points out that much of what the three know is actionable Queeg can likely explain away as imposing discipline and the trio’s action as mutiny.

Finally the ship (and the bigger fleet to which it belongs) runs into a terrible storm that goes on for hours, causing them severe damage. Queeg refuses to deviate in the least from their ordered course despite the fact that doing so will alleviate the threat of capsizing.

The storm goes on and on and Maryk’s requests and suggestions to alter heading become more and more strident; finally Queeg retreats into himself, though physically remaining on the bridge, and Maryk assumes command, with the complicity of Keith, who is officer of the deck during this time. They return to San Francisco, the Caine‘s home port, for the climactic trial of Lt. Maryk on chargs of mutiny.

While watching I came to really wonder how much of the story came from Herman Wouk’s own experience on the same kind of ship during the war. The performances are generally strong, with interesting small parts by very young Lee Marvin, Claude Akins and E.G. Marshall; I’m less clear on why Roberts and Dmytryk kept Ensign Keith’s subplot other than as a sop to the female audience.

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