The Caine Mutiny

Queeg, the new captain of the minesweeper Caine, arrives promising discipline. He soon starts behaving strangely: rolling steel balls in his hand, fixating on trivial rules, freezing under pressure. When the ship is close to going down in a typhoon, his executive officer takes command. Then everyone ends up in court. The subject is not the mutiny but the reversal in the courtroom. Just as you conclude the officers were right, the defence lawyer wins the case and then turns on his own clients; in his view the men who really abandoned Queeg were these officers, who never spoke to him and held him in contempt. The form divides in two: the section aboard ship and the courtroom. The second is almost entirely talk. The source is Herman Wouk's Pulitzer-winning novel. The Navy only supported the production on the condition that it be stated plainly that no such mutiny had actually occurred, and a note to that effect was placed at the head of the film. Humphrey Bogart plays Queeg and was nominated for the best actor Oscar; he accepted less than his usual fee for the part. Edward Dmytryk directs. Who it is for: viewers who like courtroom drama and stories built on authority. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a clearly right side; the film moves all of its sympathy at the end.