The Caine Mutiny
From Free net encyclopedia
Template:Infobox Film The Caine Mutiny, a 1954 movie directed by Edward Dmytryk, and based on Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize-winning (1951), best-selling novel and subsequent stage hit (The Caine Mutiny Court Martial), provided Humphrey Bogart with the next-to-last great role of his acting career and a spectacular comeback for Dmytryk, formerly one of the Hollywood Ten who first declined but subsequently agreed to speak of his past as a member of the American Communist Party. The film earned Bogart an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, one of seven Oscar nominations the film received. Dmytryk was also nominated for a Directors' Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures.
The tale is of a mutiny aboard a fictitious, war-weary World War II U.S. Navy destroyer minesweeper, the U.S.S. Caine, provoked by the ongoing tensions between a by-the-book, battle-fatigued, isolated and paranoid captain, Lt. Cmdr. Philip F. Queeg (Bogart), and his officers: dedicated but troubled executive officer Lt. Stephen Maryk (Van Johnson); cynical, duplicitous communications officer (and budding novelist) Lt. Thomas Keefer (Fred MacMurray); and callow assistant communicator Ens. Willie Keith (Robert Francis), whose coming of age from spoiled society brat to mature seaman and combat veteran is half the framework in which Queeg's demise is viewed. The other half is Maryk, formerly a loyal executive officer but slowly coming to terms with Keefer's continuous, apparently well-measured criticisms. In time, after several shipboard incidents veering from petty (the infamous strawberries theft) to dangerous (an embarrassing gaffe during a sea escort, in which Queeg furiously reprimanded a bridge officer's incomplete appearance while the ship continued traveling in a circle and cut a critical tow line), Keefer---only somewhat subtly---convinces Maryk to study Navy regulations regarding relieving an incapacitated captain of command---and Maryk has the opportunity when the troubled, battle-exhausted Queeg appears dissembling and terrorised in a typhoon that nearly capsizes the Caine.
The actors didn't exactly match Wouk's original physical descriptions of their characters but were otherwise cast strongly---and, in MacMurray's case, surprisingly, MacMurray playing against type as the duplicitous Keefer, whose implausible denial on the witness stand during Maryk's court-martial leaves the defence no recourse but to let the tortured Queeg convict himself with his own dissembling, paranoid testimony.
The Caine Mutiny earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Tom Tully as Captain DeVriess, the first captain of the Caine), Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording, Best Film Editing, and Best Dramatic Score (Max Steiner). None of the nominations won; Bogart was denied his second Academy Award (he had won previously for The African Queen); he lost to Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront as Best Actor; Jose Ferrer turned in a stellar supporting performance as the Navy attorney assigned reluctantly to defend mutineers Maryk and Keith; E.G. Marshall turned in an equivalent performance as the court martial's lead prosecutor. The title role, the Caine itself, was played by the Navy destroyer-minesweeper USS Thompson (DMS-38).
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. But 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 San Francisco port. Following the opening credits, the epigraph claims 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 and "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."
Trivia
Michael Caine (born Maurice Micklewhite) changed his name to Michael Scott when he first became an actor. He happened to be speaking to his agent in a telephone box in London's Leicester Square when he was informed that he had to change his name again because another actor was already using the name Michael Scott. His agent insisted that he come up with a new name immediately. Looking around for inspiration, he noted that The Caine Mutiny was being shown at the Odeon cinema, and so he decided to change his name to Michael Caine.
Edward Dmytryk spent time in prison as one of the Hollywood Ten, writers and filmmakers sent to prison for refusing to answer questions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities about their ties to the Communist Party. After his release, Dmytryk spoke of his own Party past (a very brief membership in 1945, and pressure from other members to insinuate Communist propaganda into his work) and identified 26 other Party members, in a second appearance before the House committee. He spent some time in England, and Stanley Kramer hired him to direct a few low-budget films before handing Dmytryk The Caine Mutiny. The film's success resurrected Dmytryk's career once and for all. He went from there to direct, among others, Raintree County, The Young Lions, a remake of the Marlene Dietrich classic The Blue Angel, and The Carpetbaggers, among others. Dmytryk died in 1999.
Fred MacMurray went on to spend over a decade as the gentle, widowed father of three spunky sons on the CBS situation comedy My Three Sons.
The supporting character of Ens. Barney Harding---whose strumming a ukelele singing a sarcastic song, "Yellowstain Blues," after Capt. Queeg inexplicably ordered a dye marker thrown off the stern during the exercise---was played by Jerry Paris. Paris later became familiar as the wiseguy next-door-neighbour dentist Jerry Helper on The Dick Van Dyke Show---and as a successful television director whose credits included numerous episodes of The Odd Couple and Happy Days.
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.
External links
- {{{2|{{{title|The Caine Mutiny}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
- Study Guide of Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny
{{Literary award navigation
| awardname = Pulitzer Prize Winners for Fiction | awardlink = Pulitzer Prize for Fiction | prevtitle = The Town | prevauthor = Conrad Richter | prevyear = 1951 | nexttitle = The Old Man and the Sea | nextauthor = Ernest Hemingway | nextyear = 1953 }}de:Die Caine war ihr Schicksal