The Caine Mutiny (film)

The Caine Mutiny
original film poster
Directed by	Edward Dmytryk
Written by	Herman Wouk (novel) Stanley Roberts Michael Blankfort (additional dialogue)
Produced by	Stanley Kramer
Starring	Humphrey Bogart Don Dubbins José Ferrer Van Johnson Fred MacMurray Robert Francis Tom Tully E.G. Marshall Lee Marvin
Cinematography	Franz Planer
Edited by	Henry Batista William A. Lyon
Music by	Max Steiner
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	June 24 1954 US
Running time	124 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2,000,000 (est)
Box office	$8,700,000 (US)

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. The film depicts a mutiny aboard a fictitious World War II U.S. Navy destroyer minesweeper, the Caine, and the subsequent court-martial of two of its officers.

Plot

Callow Ensign Willis Seward "Willie" Keith (Robert Francis, in his film debut) reports for duty aboard the Caine, his first assignment out of officer candidate school. He is disappointed to find the Caine to be a small, battle-scarred destroyer-minesweeper. Its captain, Commander DeVriess (Tom Tully) has discarded spit-and-polish discipline, and the crew of the Caine has become slovenly and superficially undisciplined – although their performance of their duties is, in fact, excellent. Keith has already met the executive officer, Lieutenant Stephen Maryk (Van Johnson), and is introduced to the cynical communications officer, aspiring novelist Lt. Thomas Keefer (Fred MacMurray).

De Vriess thinks Keith has attempted to duck duty aboard the Caine by using family influence, and rides him hard. But DeVriess is soon replaced by Lieutenant Commander Phillip Francis Queeg (Humphrey Bogart), a no-nonsense veteran officer. Queeg has seen years of continuous combat duty and is somewhat battle-fatigued. He quickly attempts to re-instill discipline into the crew. He warns, "Mr. Maryk, you may tell the crew for me that there are four ways of doing things: the right way, the wrong way, the Navy way, and my way. If they do things my way, we'll get along."

The next day, the Caine is assigned to tow a target for gunnery practice. Afterwards, Queeg berates both Keith and Keefer over a crewman's appearance and while distracted, cuts off the helmsman's warning; as a result, the Caine runs over and cuts the towline to the target. Queeg refuses to accept responsibility for the accident and tries to cover it up. Other incidents serve to undermine Queeg's authority. When a quart of strawberries is stolen from the officers' mess, the captain goes to absurd lengths to try to find the culprit. More seriously, in combat, Queeg breaks off escorting a group of landing craft during an amphibious assault long before they reach the fiercely-defended shore, dropping a yellow marker in the water instead and leaving them unsupported. Afterwards, Queeg makes a speech to his officers, not explicitly apologizing for his behavior, but bending enough to ask for their support. His disgruntled subordinates do not respond.

Keefer begins trying to convince Maryk that he should relieve Queeg on the basis of mental illness. Finally, during a violent typhoon, Queeg ignores Maryk's strong recommendations to take on ballast during the storm for fear of fouling the fuel lines with salt water, and to steer into the waves, decisions that threaten to capsize the Caine. When Queeg seems to become paralyzed and unable to deal with the crisis, Maryk relieves him and takes over, with Keith's support.

When they return to port, Maryk and Keith face a court-martial for mutiny. After questioning them and Keefer, Lieutenant Barney Greenwald (Jose Ferrer) reluctantly accepts the job of defense counsel. The proceedings do not go well, as the self-serving Keefer has careful managed to cover himself and denies any complicity. However, Greenwald expertly cross-examines Queeg, getting him to snap and give blatantly paranoid testimony. Maryk and Keith are acquitted.

A drunken Greenwald crashes their celebration party and proceeds to lambaste Maryk, Keith and finally Keefer for not supporting their captain when he most needed it. He gets Maryk and Keith to admit that if they had given Queeg the support he had asked for, he might not have frozen during the typhoon and that therefore they were in fact guilty of mutiny. Greenwald concludes by throwing a glassful of wine into Keefer's face, denouncing him as the real "author" of the Caine mutiny, manipulating the others while keeping his own hands officially clean. After Greenwald leaves, the other officers walk out on Keefer, leaving him alone in the room.

A few days later, Keith reports to his new ship and is surprised to find himself once again serving under Commander DeVriess. However, his new commanding officer lets Keith know that he will start with a clean slate.

Cast

File:Caine Mutiny.jpg

Fred MacMurray, Robert Francis, Van Johnson and Humphrey Bogart on the bridge of the Caine

• Humphrey Bogart as Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg
• José Ferrer as Lieutenant Barney Greenwald
• Van Johnson as Lieutenant Steve Maryk
• Fred MacMurray as Lieutenant Tom Keefer
• Robert Francis as Ensign Willie Keith
• May Wynn as May Wynn
• Tom Tully as Commander DeVriess
• E.G. Marshall as Lieutenant Commander Challee, the prosecutor
• Arthur Franz as Lieutenant (j.g.) H. Paynter Jr.
• Lee Marvin as 'Meatball'
• Warner Anderson as Captain Blakely, president of the court-martial
• Claude Akins as 'Horrible'
• Katherine Warren as Mrs. Keith, Ensign Keith's mother
• Jerry Paris as Ensign Barney Harding

Cast notes

• The Caine Mutiny marked the film debut of Robert Francis, who was being groomed for stardom – but on 31 July 1955, he was killed when the private plane he was piloting crashed shortly after take off from Burbank airport.
• The actress who played May Wynn was born Donna Lee Hickey, and used that name until The Caine Mutiny, when she adopted the name of her character for her stage name. Wynn had only a short film career afterwards.

Production

When the U.S. Navy's hesitated about endorsing the film and aiding the production, studios shied away from bidding for the film rights to Herman Wouk's novel. As a result, producer Stanley Kramer purchased the rights himself for an estimated $60,000 - $70,000 dollars. After an unusually long pre-production period of 15 months, due to the Navy's indecision, The Caine Mutiny went into production from 3 June to 24 August Template:Fy, under the inital working title of Authority and Rebellion.

Location shooting took place at Naval Station Treasure Island in San Francisco, Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, and at Yosemite National Park in California, the scene of Keith's romantic interlude with May Wynn while on leave.

The film premiered in New York City on 24 June 1954, and went into general release on July 28. It cost an estimated $2 million to make and grossed $8.7 million in the United States.

Casting

Richard Widmark was originally intended to play Queeg, but producer Stanley Kramer opted for Humphrey Bogart instead. It took a while to get Bogart, however, even though he very much wanted to play the part, because Columbia was not willing to pay Bogart his usual top salary, which Bogart complained bitterly about to his wife, Lauren Bacall.

Lee Marvin was cast as one of the sailors not only for his acting ability, but 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. Marvin ended being an unofficial technical advisor for the film.

Script

Despite the fact that he had already worked the material from the novel into a stage play, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, which premiered on Broadway in January 1954 and ran for a year, Herman Wouk's initial attempt at writing the screenplay for The Caine Mutiny was considered "a disaster" by director Edward Dymtryk, and he was replaced by Stanley Roberts, who later quit when told to cut the film down to two hours. Those cuts, fifty pages worth, were done by Michael Blankfort, who received an "additional dialog" credit.

Wouk's novel goes into much greater detail about Ensign Keith's experiences both in midshipman school and in his early relationship with his girlfriend May Wynn. After the court-martial, he returns to the Caine and develops into a mature, competent Naval officer, something that is only hinted at in the film.

File:Caine Mutiny Bogart.jpg

Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny (1954)

Navy involvement

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. 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." However, while no mutiny has ever occurred in the U.S. Navy, at least one is alleged to have been planned, the Somers Affair.

The Caine was played by the Navy destroyer minesweeper USS Thompson (DMS-38). This ship was not a 4-stack World War I-era ship, nicknamed a "four-piper," like the vessel in the novel because at the time the film was made, all such vessels had been scrapped. The Jones, the ship the Caine raced back to port early in the film, was portrayed by the minesweeper USS Surfbird (AM-383). 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 the filming.

Director

The Caine Mutiny was a comeback for Edward Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten. Like other writers and filmmakers of the Ten, he spent time in prison for refusing to answer questions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities about his ties to the American Communist Party. After his release, Dmytryk spoke of his own Party past, which consisted of a very brief membership in 1945, followed by pressure by other members to insinuate Communist propaganda into his work. He then identified 26 other Party members in a second appearance before the House committee.

Stanley Kramer hired him to direct a few low-budget films before handing him The Caine Mutiny. The film's success resurrected Dmytryk's career. He went on to direct Raintree County with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor; The Young Lions with Clift, Marlon Brando and Dean Martin; a remake of the Marlene Dietrich classic The Blue Angel, and the film version of Harold Robbins's The Carpetbaggers, among others.

Dymytrk felt that The Caine Mutiny could have been better than it was. His thought was that to fully flesh out the characters and tell the story completely, the movie should have been three and a half to four hours long, but Columbia's Harry Cohn insisted on a two-hour limit.

Music

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

The lyrics of the derisive song "Yellowstain Blues", which mocked Queeg's perceived cowardice during the landing incident, were written by Herman Wouk.

Response

Bogart's performance as Lt. Commander Philip Queeg, while terminally ill with throat cancer, is considered by many to be the greatest performance of his career. Although his role is not as popular as his portrayals in earlier films, such as Casablanca or The Big Sleep, he was commended by critics for his "ticking time bomb" method of acting that inspired Jack Nicholson in The Shining. When his final scene was shot, Bogart was applauded by the entire crew.

Awards

The film received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Humphrey Bogart, losing to Marlon Brando for On the Waterfront), Best Supporting Actor (Tom Tully), Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording, Best Film Editing, and Best Dramatic Score (Max Steiner).

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

Influence

• Maurice Micklewhite changed his name to Michael Scott when he first became an actor. He was told by his agent by telephone that another actor was already using the name. Looking around for inspiration, he noted that The Caine Mutiny was being shown at the Odeon Cinema, so he changed his name to Michael Caine.

• The British science-fiction sitcom Red Dwarf is about a huge spaceship which is run by an inept, even incompetent, computer called Holly. In one episode Holly is replaced by a back-up computer called Queeg. Whereas Holly is sloppy and easy-going, Queeg is ruthless, authoritarian and by-the-book, bringing misery to the lives of the crew, in ways similar to Bogart's character.

Inaccuracy

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. This may or may not be true based on the length of the tow-line.

In the novel Captain Queeg is roughly 30 years old at the time the mutiny takes place. Humphrey Bogart, however, was 55 years old at the time of filming, far too old to have been given command of a World War II minesweeper.

See also

• Trial movies
• Typhoon Cobra, an actual typhoon that threatened U.S. warships under circumstances similar to those in the book.

External links

• The Caine Mutiny at IMDb
• The Caine Mutiny at the TCM Movie Database
• The Caine Mutiny at AllMovie
• Template:Mpdb movie