The Caine Mutiny

B

I must plead ignorant to the fact that when I loaded The Caine Mutiny DVD I thought it was a hard boiled naval drama - kind of like Crimson Tide. Boy, was I wrong. It's no drama, 1 hour into the film I realized this is a comedy and satire - kind of like Dr Strangelove. How did I feel about it? This film evokes the complicated feelings that I reserve for The Philadelphia Story. On one hand, the screenplay and direction keeps the plot moving and our interest firm, on the other, we come out sensing that we haven't watched anything at all.

The story opens from the viewpoint of Ensign Keith (Robert Francis), an upperclass young man enlisted into World War II. He is armed with a Princeton degree, a string of recommendations and a whole set of ideals, landing on his first assignment as an officer on the minesweeper ship Caine. There he discovers that the captain is a slack job manning a "slack ship". To his relief, a new captain will take charge of Caine, Captain Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) whose first impressions recall any hardwood Naval officer: "On board of my ship, excellent performance is standard, stardard performance is substandard, substandard performance is not permitted to exist." Soon, however, we see that Captain Queeg is rather queer. His first slip was when he ineffectually let the ship drift to cut a tow line during target practice. Over time, his errors and flaws grew too noticable to be ignored by a loyal 2nd commanding officer Lt Maryk (Van Johnson). Maryk and Queeg confronted each other over the ship's command during a violent typhoon, and though they made it our safely, Maryk is now under arrest for muteneering and a court martial ensued to determine his fate.

As a whole, I enjoyed the movie immensely. Not unlikely this is due to Humprey Bogart's performance as Captain Queeg. He is strong, serious, stupid and crazy all at once. Some scenes are actually funnier when we picture things from his point of view. We despise him, yes, but he is so genuine that we can't help but to sympathise with him. For his performace here, Bogart received his last Academy Award nomination.

A lion's share of the screentime is devoted to Ensign Keith who discovers the madness of the Navy life on the Caine slowly unfolding. He is the everyman we are supposed to identify with - tall, handsome, straight as an arrow, boring. Robert Francis's stiff-as-a-board potrayal of him isn't doing much good either. Fred MacMurray is the duplicitous Lt Keefer, a wanna-be novelist with quick wit and sly inclinations; while Van Johnson's Maryk is dumb and tough.

Director Edward Dmytryk kept the movie's tone thankfully light throughout. From the playful score which sounds like that of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, one can't help but to grasp the playfulness of what is being offered to us. However, the problem with this movie is that of editing. Many subplots, including that of Keith's relationship to a pretty singer (May Wynn) is draggy, long and uninteresting. Furthermore, Keith shouldn't even be the central figure of the film. He doesn't do or say much, his role in the plot is essentially minimal. In the middle of the movie, we are subjected to a change in viewpoint to that of Maryk and this shift is uncomfortable as it is so out of place.

All in all, The Caine Mutiny probably has one of the most memorable subplot in classic movies - the strawberry affair. There are other memorable instances in the film, but they are few indeed. Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove is reminiscent of The Caine Mutiny, but the former is superious by far. This movie is neither as biting, funny or clever as Kubrick's best. Enjoyable throughout, I must admit, but The Caine Mutiny proves to be rather bland once viewed as a whole.