The Caine Mutiny (film)

The Caine Mutiny is a 1954 American film. A fictional Navy drama set in the Pacific during World War II, it was directed by Edward Dmytryk and produced by Stanley Kramer, and stars Humphrey Bogart, José Ferrer, Van Johnson, and Fred MacMurray. The film is based on The Caine Mutiny, the 1951 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel written by Herman Wouk. It depicts the events on board a fictitious World War II U.S. Navy minesweeper and a subsequent court-martial for mutiny.

The Caine Mutiny
original film poster
Directed byEdward Dmytryk
Produced byStanley Kramer
Written byMichael Blankfort (add'l dialogue)[1]
Screenplay byStanley Roberts
Based onThe Caine Mutiny
1951 novel
by Herman Wouk
Starring
Music byMax Steiner
CinematographyFranz Planer
Edited by
Production
company
Stanley Kramer Productions
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release date
  • June 24, 1954 (1954-06-24) (New York City)
Running time
125 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2 million[2]
Box office$21.8 million[3]

The film received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Bogart), Best Supporting Actor (Tom Tully), Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording, Best Film Editing and Best Dramatic Score (Max Steiner) at the 27th Academy Awards.[4] Dmytryk was also nominated for a Directors Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures. It was the second highest-grossing film in the United States in 1954.[5]

Plot

Newly commissioned Ensign Willis Seward "Willie" Keith reports to the minesweeper USS Caine, commanded by William De Vriess, also meeting executive officer Stephen Maryk and communications officer Thomas Keefer. De Vriess, popular with the men but disliked by Keith, is relieved by Phillip Francis Queeg, who immediately attempts to instill strict discipline on the Caine's lax crew.

After a day of gunnery target towing, Queeg orders a turn to head back to Pearl Harbor, but distracts himself by berating Keith and Keefer over a crewman's appearance. Ignoring the helmsman's repeated warnings, he allows the Caine to turn in a full circle and cut the towline, setting the target adrift. Queeg tries to cover up the incident.

The "strawberry investigation."

Assigned to escort a group of landing craft during an invasion of a small Pacific island, Queeg abandons his mission before he reaches the designated departure point, and instead orders the dropping of a yellow dye marker, leaving the landing craft to fend for themselves. Queeg asks his officers for their support, but they remain silent and nickname him "Old Yellowstain", implying cowardice.

Keefer, believing Queeg to be paranoid, encourages Maryk to consider relieving Queeg on the basis of mental incapacity under Article 184 of Navy Regulations. Though Maryk angrily rejects that possibility, he begins keeping a medical log documenting the captain's behavior.

When strawberries go missing from the officers' mess, Queeg convenes an elaborate investigation to determine the culprit, recalling an incident earlier in his career when he received a commendation for uncovering the theft of food. Despite the relative unimportance of the theft and the claim that the kitchen staff ate the missing strawberries, Queeg pushes ahead with his investigation, insisting that a duplicate cabinet key must have been made and used, and demanding an onerous search of the vessel.

Convinced of Queeg's instability, Maryk asks Keefer and Keith to go with him to see Admiral Halsey about the matter. Arriving aboard Halsey's flagship, Keefer backs down, telling the others that Queeg's actions will be interpreted as attempts to instill discipline. As they leave, an aide tells them that a typhoon is approaching.

At the height of the storm, Maryk urges the captain to reverse course into the wind and take on ballast, but Queeg refuses, having received no order from the fleet to change course or to maneuver at will. The ship's foremast and radar are carried away and the forward stack smashed by waves. The stern comes completely out of the water, the screws racing, and the destroyer takes alarming rolls that threaten to capsize her. Concerned that the ship will founder, the crew look to Queeg for guidance, but he appears to be frozen, either by indecision or fear. With Keith's support, Maryk relieves Queeg of command.

The battered Caine returns to San Francisco, where Maryk and Keith face a court-martial for mutiny. Wounded naval aviator Barney Greenwald, a lawyer in civilian life, reluctantly becomes Maryk's defense counsel after eight Navy lawyers turn down the assignment.

At the court-martial, Keefer lies on the stand, claiming he never observed any mental illness in Queeg and never counseled Maryk to relieve him. A Navy psychiatrist testifies that Queeg is fit for command, but during Greenwald's questioning confirms that Queeg shows symptoms of a paranoid personality. Under Greenwald's relentless cross-examination, Queeg exhibits odd behavior on the stand – which he himself eventually realizes reflects badly on him – and Maryk is acquitted.

Following the acquittal, the officers of the Caine hold a party, where Keefer receives a frosty reception from Maryk. A drunken Greenwald arrives and berates the officers for not appreciating Queeg's long service and failing to give him the support he asked for. He denounces Keefer as the real "author" of the mutiny, a man who "hated the Navy" and manipulated others while keeping his own hands clean. He then throws a glass of champagne in Keefer's face and departs, followed by the rest of the officers, leaving Keefer alone in the room.

After the court-martial, Keith is assigned to a new destroyer commanded by the Caine's first captain, Commander De Vriess.

Cast
The act of mutiny: Maryk's relief of Captain Queeg during the typhoon.
Humphrey Bogart
José Ferrer
Van Johnson
Fred MacMurray

Production

Script

Herman Wouk had already adapted his novel as a stage play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, which premiered on Broadway in January 1954 and ran for more than a year. The play was directed by Charles Laughton and was a critical as well as a commercial success.[7] Wouk was initially selected to write the screenplay, but director Dmytryk thought his work was not successful. He replaced the novelist with Stanley Roberts, an experienced screenwriter. Roberts later quit the production after being told to cut the screenplay so the film could be kept to two hours. The 50 pages worth of cuts were made by Michael Blankfort, who received an "additional dialog" credit.[8]

The film differs from the novel, which focused on the Keith character, who became secondary in the film. The film instead focuses on Queeg.[7] Kramer "mollified the Navy" by modifying the Queeg characterization to make him less of a madman, as portrayed by Wouk, and more a victim of battle fatigue.[9] Studios did not want to purchase the film rights to Wouk's novel until cooperation of the U.S. Navy was settled.[10] Independent producer Stanley Kramer purchased the rights himself for an estimated $60,000 – $70,000. The Navy's reluctance to cooperate led to an unusually long pre-production period of fifteen months. Principal photography took place between June 3 to August 24, 1953 under the initial working title of Authority and Rebellion.[11]

Casting and director

Stanley Kramer and Columbia Pictures intended to cast Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg. Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn knew Bogart wanted the part and took advantage of that fact, and Bogart eventually settled for much less than his usual $200,000 salary. "This never happens to Cooper or Grant or Gable, but always to me," Bogart complained to his wife, Lauren Bacall.[8]

Van Johnson was loaned to Columbia by MGM, where he was under contract. Being cast as Maryk was a breakthrough for the actor, who felt that he had been in a "rut" by being typecast in light roles. During the filming of the scene off Oahu in which Maryk swims fully clothed to retrieve a line, his character is warned that there are sharks in the water; these sharks do not appear on camera, but the actor's life was saved when a real-life Navy rifleman shot one which was approaching.[9] Lee Marvin was cast as one of the sailors, not only for his acting, but also because of his knowledge of ships at sea. Marvin had served in the U.S. Marines from the beginning of American involvement in World War II through the Battle of Saipan, in which he was wounded. As a result, he became an unofficial technical adviser for the film.[8]

Before choosing Dmytryk for The Caine Mutiny, Kramer had hired the director for three low-budget films. Dmytryk had previously been blacklisted, and the success of the film helped revive his career.

The Caine Mutiny would be the first feature role in Robert Francis's short four-film Hollywood career as he was killed when the private plane he was piloting crashed shortly after take off from Burbank airport in California on July 31, 1955.[12]

The Navy was initially uncomfortable with both the portrayal of a mentally unbalanced man as the captain of one of its ships and the word "mutiny" in the film's title. After Stanley Roberts' shooting script was completed and approved by the Navy after 15 months of negotiations, the Department agreed to cooperate with Columbia Pictures by providing access to its ships, planes, combat boats, Pearl Harbor, the port of San Francisco, and Naval Station Treasure Island for filming. Dmytryk recalled in his memoir that after "noisy" protests from the Navy subsided, the film production received wholehearted cooperation.[13] This included the conversion of two soon to be decommissioned destroyer/destroyer minesweepers, USS Thompson (DD-627/DMS-38) and USS Doyle (DD-494/DMS-34/), as facsimiles to portray the USS Caine.[14][15]

An epigraph appears on screen immediately following the opening credits that reads: "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."[8] In 1842, an incipient mutiny was quashed before it occurred on board the US Navy Brig USS Somers.[16]

In addition to the Pearl Harbor and San Francisco Bay Area locations, including the Caine steaming back and forth several times under the Golden Gate Bridge, the romantic subplot features scenes shot on location at Yosemite National Park.[17]

Music

This was the last of a number of Bogart films scored by composer Max Steiner, mostly for Warner Bros. The main title theme, The Caine Mutiny March, was included in RCA Victor's collection of classic Bogart film scores, recorded by Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra.[18]

The lyrics of the song, "Yellowstain Blues," which mocked Queeg's perceived cowardice during the landing incident, were drawn from The Caine Mutiny, the novel by Herman Wouk on which the film was based.[19]

Soundtrack

The original soundtrack album for The Caine Mutiny was not officially released until 2017, and copies of the soundtrack made before that are very rare. Perhaps a dozen copies survive. RCA Victor planned an LP release with musical excerpts on the first side and the complete dialogue of the climactic court-martial scene on side two, but Herman Wouk believed that including this scene was an infringement on his recently opened Broadway play dealing with the court-martial. He threatened to prohibit Columbia Pictures from making any further adaptations of his work. According to Wouk, "Columbia head Harry Cohn looked into the matter, called me back, and said in his tough gravelly voice, 'I've got you beat on the legalities, but I've listened to the record and it's no goddamn good, so I'm yanking it.'" Max Steiner's score was finally released by Intrada Records in 2017 as Special Collection Volume ISC 382.[20]

Reception

The film premiered in New York City on June 24, 1954, and went into general release on July 28. Made on a budget of $2 million, it was the second-highest-grossing film of 1954, earning $8.7 million in theatrical rentals in the United States.[5][21] It was the most successful of Kramer's productions, some of which had previously lost money, and put his entire production company – as well as Columbia Pictures – in the black.[13]

The film got a major pre-release boost three weeks before its premiere when Bogart as Queeg appeared on the cover of the June 7, 1954 issue of Time magazine. The accompanying cover story ("Cinema: The Survivor") praised Bogart's portrayal of Queeg as "a blustering, secretive figure in Navy suntans, who brings the hollow, driven, tyrannical character of Captain Queeg to full and invidious life, yet seldom fails to maintain a bond of sympathy with his audience. He deliberately gives Queeg the mannerisms and appearance of an officer of sternness and decision, and then gradually discloses him as a man who is bottling up a scream, a man who never meets another's eyes. In the courtroom scene, Bogart's Queeg seems oblivious of his own mounting hysteria. Then, suddenly, he knows he is undone; he stops and stares stricken at the court, during second after ticking second of dramatic and damning silence."[22]

Director Edward Dmytryk felt The Caine Mutiny could have been better than it was and should have been three and a half to four hours long to fully portray all the characters and complex story, but Columbia's Cohn insisted on a two-hour limit.[8] Reviewing the film in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote that the job of condensing Wouk's novel to two hours had been achieved "with clarity and vigor, on the whole." His reservations concerned the studio's attempt to "cram" in "more of the novel than was required," such as the "completely extraneous" love affair between Keith and May Wynn, which Crowther found to be a plot diversion that weakened dramatic tension. Although he doubted whether the novel had a structure suited for film, he noted that Roberts had "endeavored to follow it faithfully." The result, he argued, was that the court-martial became "an anticlimax" as it repeated Queeg's visible collapse seen in the typhoon but still considered the core of the film "smartly and stingingly played" and "though somewhat garbled" was still "a vibrant film."[23]

Awards and honors

For the 27th Academy Awards, the film received nominations for Best Picture (won by On the Waterfront), Best Actor (Humphrey Bogart, losing to Marlon Brando for On the Waterfront), Best Supporting Actor (Tom Tully), Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording (John P. Livadary), Best Film Editing, and Best Dramatic Score (Max Steiner), but won no awards.[4]

Dmytryk was also nominated for a Directors Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures.

American Film Institute Lists

Legacy

In his book American Literature on Stage and Film, historian Thomas S. Hischak says that Dmytryk handled both the action sequences and character portrayals deftly, and calls Queeg's breakdown during the trial "the stuff of movie legend."[7]

The film and novel influenced the drafters of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which set forth conditions for removing the President of the United States. John D. Feerick, former dean of Fordham University School of Law, who assisted in drafting the amendment, told The Washington Post in 2018 that the film was a “live depiction” of the type of crisis that could arise "if a president ever faced questions about physical or mental inabilities but disagreed completely with the judgment," which was not dealt with in the Constitution. Lawmakers and lawyers drafting the amendment didn't want an "Article 184 situation" as depicted in the film, in which the Vice President of the U.S. or others could topple the president by merely saying the president was "disabled."[28]

Cultural influence

When Michael Caine, born Maurice Micklewhite, first became an actor he adopted the stage name "Michael Scott". He was later told by his agent that another actor was already using the same name, and that he had to come up with a new one immediately. Speaking to his agent from a telephone box in Leicester Square in London, he looked around for inspiration. Being a fan of Bogart, he noted that The Caine Mutiny was being shown at the Odeon Cinema, and adopted a new name from the movie title. Caine has often joked in interviews that, had he looked the other way, he would have ended up as "Michael One Hundred and One Dalmatians".[29]

Vince Gilligan used a clip of the film in a Breaking Bad episode ("Madrigal", 2012), and has stated that The Caine Mutiny was one of his favorite movies as a child.[30] The final scene of "Chicanery", an episode of the Breaking Bad spinoff series Better Call Saul, is an homage to the film's climactic courtroom scene.[31]

In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, members of the human resistance serve aboard the submarine USS Jimmy Carter. It is piloted by a reprogrammed Terminator that has been named "Queeg" by the crew.[32]

In the Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine", the obsessive Commodore Matt Decker, portrayed by William Windom, fusses constantly with two futuristic tape cartridges, much as Captain Queeg rubs together two ball bearings. Windom publicly acknowledged that Decker's behavior was based on Queeg's.[33]

See also
  • Trial movies
  • Typhoon Cobra (1944), the violent storm that inspired the one in the film.[34]
  • USS Somers (1842), only mutiny in U.S. Navy history which led to executions.

References
  1. The Caine Mutiny at the American Film Institute Catalog
  2. Tranberg, Charles (2014) Fred MacMurray: A Biography, Bear Manor Media
  3. Box Office Information for The Caine Mutiny. The Numbers. Retrieved April 15, 2013
  4. "The 27th Academy Awards (1955) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-20.
  5. 'The Top Box-Office Hits of 1954', Variety Weekly, January 5, 1955
  6. McCarty, Clifford (1965). Bogey: The Films of Humphrey Bogart (1st ed.). New York, N.Y.: Cadillac Publishing Co., Inc. p. 174.
  7. Hischak, Thomas S. (2012). American literature on stage and screen 525 works and their adaptations. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. pp. 35–36. ISBN 9780786492794. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
  8. McGee, Scott "The Caine Mutiny" (TCM article)
  9. Davis, Ronald L. (2016). Van Johnson: MGM's Golden Boy. University Press of Mississippi. pp. 159–161. ISBN 9781496803856. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
  10. TCM Notes
  11. TCM Overview: The Caine Mutiny, Turner Classics Movies (TCM)
  12. Osborne, Robert outro, TCM broadcast
  13. Dmytryk, Edward (1996). Odd man out : a memoir of the Hollywood Ten. Carbondale [u.a.]: Southern Illinois Univ. Press. pp. 186–190. ISBN 9780809319992. Retrieved 4 March 2016. the caine mutiny.
  14. "Cinema: The Survivor", TIME Magazine, June 7, 1954
  15. "A Tin Can Sailors Destroyer History USS THOMPSON (DD-627)" Destroyers.org
  16. Anthony, Irving. "Mutiny on the USS Somers," 17, no.1 Sea Classics (Jan. 1984): 18-22, 78-79.
  17. "Facts about The Caine Mutiny". www.classicmoviehub.com. Classic Movie Hub. Retrieved 29 March 2020.
  18. The Caine Mutiny Music Credits IMDb
  19. Wouk, Herman. The Caine Mutiny
  20. "The Caine Mutiny; Original Music from the Motion Picture". store.intrada.com. Retrieved August 12, 2017.
  21. Steinberg, Cobbett (1980). Film Facts. New York: Facts on File, Inc. p. 22. ISBN 0-87196-313-2.
  22. "Cinema: The Survivor", TIME Magazine, June 7, 1954
  23. Crowther, Bosley (June 25, 1954). "The Caine Mutiny (1954) The Screen: 'Caine Mutiny' Arrives; Vibrant Depiction of Novel Is at Capitol". New York Times. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  24. AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies Nominees
  25. AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains Nominees
  26. AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes Nominees
  27. AFI's 10 Top 10 Ballot
  28. Flynn, Meagan (10 September 2018). "How 'The Caine Mutiny' and the paranoid Capt. Queeg influenced the 25th Amendment's drafters, making it harder to sideline a president". The Washington Post. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  29. "Michael Caine (I)". The Guardian. London. 1998-11-06. Retrieved 2010-05-25.
  30. Nelson, Erik (2012-07-23). "Vince Gilligan: I've never Googled "Breaking Bad"". Salon.com. Retrieved 2012-08-03.
  31. Rowles, Dustin (2017-05-11). "The Movie That Inspired The 'Best Episode Ever' Of 'Better Call Saul'". Uproxx. Retrieved 2017-05-17.
  32. rockknj (March 23, 2009). "Terminator, "Today is the Day, Part 2": Never trust a captain named Queeg". NJ.com. Retrieved 2009-05-02.
  33. DeCandido, Keith (November 17, 2015) "Star Trek The Original Series Rewatch: 'The Doomsday Machine'" Tor.com (Macmillan) Quote: "But the big guest is the great William Windom as Decker. He fully inhabits the role, giving him all kinds of wonderful little tics and habits, from the awkward way he sits in the captain's chair to the way he plays with the data tapes (which Windom has said was inspired by how Humphrey Bogart fiddled with ball bearings when he played Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny)."
  34. Drury, Bob (2007). Halsey's Typhoon - The True Story of a Fighting Admiral, an Epic Storm and an Untold Rescue. Atlantic Monthly Press. p. 286. ISBN 978-1-59887-086-2.

Further reading
  • Rosenberg, Norman L. "The Caine Mutiny: Not Just One but Many Legal Dramas." Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce 31 (2000): 623+.
  • Tibbetts, John C., and James M. Welsh, eds. The Encyclopedia of Novels Into Film (2nd ed. 2005) pp 45–46.
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