Chateau Lloyd

I've cycled back to watching old movies again and this week's entry was the classic The Caine Mutiny.  It's an usual "war movie" insofar as it focuses on a ship that sees little actual combat.  Instead, it focuses on the interplay between the commander, his officers, and the crew.

Humphrey Bogart is quite remarkable in this film, because he goes so strongly against type.  Bogart started out as a 'heavy' and generally played gangster villains.  His breakthrough role was as a private eye in The Maltese Falcon which was followed by his immortal Rick Blaine in Casablanca (arguably the best movie ever made).

There followed a series of strong roles for Bogart, often paired with Lauren Bacall, but with The Caine Mutiny he not only plays the antagonist, he plays a very unsympathetic one.  Queeg is a bully, a liar and a coward - though his cowardice is arguably the function of what used to be called "battle fatigue."  His long service fighting U-boats in the Atlantic has worn him out. 

I should mention that I'm not a fan of Herman Wouk, and have no plans to read the book.  I read The Winds of War and War and Remembrance and disliked both intensely.  Wouk was a decent enough writer, but I didn't like what he had to say.  The title of the book (and film) is one of those things that is too clever by half.  The biblical reference is as subtle as a baseball bat to the knee.

Getting back to the movie, Fred MacMurray plays arguably his least sympathetic character ever, even topping the crooked insurance agent in Double Indemnity.  He's does a great job of selling the one face before flipping under pressure.

I'm not a fan of Robert Francis, who manages just fine as the Ivy League tourist doing his wartime hitch in the Navy and trying to balance his lust for a torch singer with his domineering mother.  Shades of The Manchurian Candidate in that relationship.

I think Van Johnson is great as the ship's executive officer who is just trying to get the job done.   He's a bit underplayed, but that's what makes the role work.

One thing I find a bit depressing is that the Navy shown in the movie is long gone.  Today's military emphasizes risk avoidance at all costs and the institutional bias is to do nothing no matter how great the danger.  Twice in the last few years US warships were involved in collisions that were entirely avoidable if anyone on the bridge was competent and/or willing to take action.

In today's Navy, the Caine would have been lost because no one would have even considered disobeying a clearly incapable captain.