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The Caine Mutiny
original film poster
Directed by	Edward Dmytryk
Produced by	Stanley Kramer
Written by	Herman Wouk (novel) Stanley Roberts
Starring	Humphrey Bogart José Ferrer Van Johnson Fred MacMurray Robert Francis Tom Tully E.G. Marshall Lee Marvin
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	June 24, 1954 (U.S.)
Running time	124 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

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.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Awards and response 3 Bogart's Performance 4 Production 4.1 Director 5 Production information 6 Influence 7 See also 8 External links

The tale is of a mutiny aboard a fictitious World War II U.S. Navy destroyer minesweeper, the U.S.S. Caine (DMS-18), provoked by the ongoing tensions between a by-the-book, battle-fatigued, isolated and paranoid captain, Lieutenant Commander Philip F. Queeg (Bogart), and his officers. The Caine's officers include the dedicated but troubled executive officer Lieutenant Stephen Maryk (Van Johnson); the cynical, duplicitous communications officer (and aspiring novelist) Lieutenant Thomas Keefer (Fred MacMurray); and the callow, young assistant communicator Ensign 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 difficulties are viewed. The other half is Maryk, who was formerly a loyal executive officer who slowly comes to terms with Keefer's continuous, well-measured criticisms of Captain Queeg's mental state and competence for leadership.

After several shipboard incidents ranging from petty (Queeg's angry order to search the ship to uncover who stole a quart of strawberries from the kitchen) to dangerous (Queeg's decision to prematurely terminate the Caine's protective escort for a group of landing craft during an invasion), Keefer persuades Maryk to study Navy regulations regarding relieving an incapacitated captain of command. Maryk reluctantly arranges a meeting with the commanding Admiral accompanied by Keefer and Keith, but as the Admiral is about to meet them, Keefer appears to lose his nerve and backs out because "they'd never believe our story". Later, during a violent typhoon, Maryk takes over from Captain Queeg after Queeg makes several decisions — not to take on ballast during the storm and not to steer into the waves — that nearly capsize the Caine.

When they return to port, Maryk faces a court martial for mutiny. Proceedings do not go well, as the self-serving Keefer is careful to deny any complicity. It was he who encouraged Maryk to question Queeg's sanity, playing amateur psychiatrist, and defense counsel Lieutenant Barney Greenwald (José Ferrer) has warned him in private that, under naval law, Keefer could, on these grounds, be held as much responsible as Maryk.

Under Greenwald's tough cross-examination, however, Queeg snaps and proceeds to completely discredit himself with his own paranoid, unstable testimony.

After Maryk is acquitted, he and his supporters celebrate at a hotel. Keefer joins them, although his "evidence" almost went against Maryk. Maryk however is prepared to forgive and forget.

At that moment a drunken Greenwald crashes the party to deliver a few home truths as to what really happened and which were not disclosed at the trial: about how he had initially refused to defend Maryk but changed his mind because he realized "the wrong man [i.e. it should have been Keefer not Maryk] was on trial"; how Queeg, who is a career naval man whereas the others have signed on due to the war, put a dishevelled and undisciplined ship back on its feet but failed to get the support of its officers; and how all this could have been avoided had they done so.

He concludes by throwing a drink in Keefer's face, denouncing him as the real "author" of the Caine mutiny and showing how he deliberately manipulated the whole thing out of frustration with the Navy and the resentment of the fact that Queeg barred him from writing a book that would make him "a million bucks". After he leaves, the other officers, shocked at this revelation of Keefer's complete disregard for the well-being even of his supposed "friends", walk out on him, leaving him alone in the room.

Keith returns to military duty aboard another ship under the command of Captain DeVriess, the previous captain of the Caine. He discovers a new respect for the captain he once dismissed as sloppy and unorthodox in his leadership.

The movie provided Humphrey Bogart with the next-to-last great role of his acting career^{[citation needed]} and a 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 received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Humphrey Bogart), 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). While Bogart had won a previous Academy Award for The African Queen), in this case, he lost to Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. Dmytryk was also nominated for a Directors' Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures.

Humphrey Bogart's performance as Lt. Commander Queeg is considered by many to be the greatest performance of his career. Although not as popular as Bogart's earlier films such as Casablanca or The Big Sleep he is commended by critics for his "ticking time bomb" method of acting that inspired Jack Nicholson in The Shining. His final scene was so captivating that afterward the entire crew applauded him and he received an Oscar nomination.

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 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."

Director 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 (with Marlon Brando as a Nazi officer), a remake of the Marlene Dietrich classic The Blue Angel, and The Carpetbaggers, among others. Dmytryk died in 1999.

• The Caine was played by the Navy destroyer-minesweeper USS Thompson (DD-627/DMS-38). This ship was not a 4-stack World War I era ship like the vessel in the novel because at the time the film was made, all such vessels had been scrapped.

• The ship was named for a fictitious Navy Commander, Arthur Wingate Caine, who died in battle while serving aboard another fictitious ship, the USS Jones. The Jones — portrayed briefly by the minesweeper USS Surfbird (AM-383) — is the ship that the Caine raced back to port during a minesweeping exercise early in the film. 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 filming purposes.

• The supporting character of Ens. Barney Hardin — whose strumming a ukelele singing a sarcastic song, "Yellowstain Blues," after Capt. Queeg inexplicably ordered a dye marker thrown off the stern during the invasion incident — was played by Jerry Paris. Paris later became familiar as the wiseguy next-door-neighbor 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. This may or may not be true based on the length of the tow-line.

• The novel goes into a great deal more detail about Willie Keith's experiences both in midshipman school and in his early relationship with his amorata May Wynn. After the court-martial, he returns to the Caine and we see his development into a tempered, capable Naval officer, which is barely hinted at in the film.

• The film's musical score was by Max Steiner, longtime staff composer at Warner Brothers, who occasionally wrote music for other studios. During the many years that Humphrey Bogart was under contract to Warners, a number of his films were scored by Steiner. This was the last Bogart film scored by Steiner; 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.

• 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 told that he should change his name again because another actor was already using "Michael Scott." 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.

• After the novel's success, the court-martial sequence in the book was adapted into a full-length Broadway play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, by its original author Herman Wouk. The play, directed by actor Charles Laughton, was a success on the stage in 1954, opening almost exactly five months before the release of the film The Caine Mutiny, which covers nearly the whole book, not just the court-martial scene. The stage version starred Lloyd Nolan as Queeg, John Hodiak as Maryk, and Henry Fonda as Greenwald. It has been revived twice on Broadway, and was presented on television in 1955, as a live presentation, and in 1988, as a made-for-television film.

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

• The Caine Mutiny at the Internet Movie Database