"Here's to the real author of the Caine mutiny."

Rating: 6/10 (1 May 2008)

'The Caine Mutiny (1954)' is a film that, for me, never quite came together. It's less than the sum of its parts, and a somewhat cumbersome amalgamation of solid performances and good ideas, but without any clear narrative thread. I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that the film was heavily influenced by the success of Fred Zinnemann's 'From Here to Eternity (1953).' Both take a strict military environment and include sparing snippets of war-time conflict, but focus largely on the issue of military authority. However, 'The Caine Mutiny,' perhaps aiming to match Lancaster/Kerr or Clift/Reed, also attempts a clumsy romantic subplot, which feels too poorly-developed to have any lasting relevance with the rest of the story.
Humphrey Bogart, as one would expect, gives the film's most memorable performance, his continually-paranoid and antagonistic leadership eliciting a curious mix of hatred and pity. Even so, Bogart had already displayed superior talent as a mentally-deteriorating personality in both John Huston's 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)' and Nicholas Ray's 'In a Lonely Place (1950).' Fred MacMurray is excellent, playing Keefer, a likable would-be novelist and a self-confessed coward, who, rather than overcoming his shortcomings in order to save his friend's life, unceremoniously abandons and betrays him. Nevertheless, he's hardly played as a villain, as though the film accepts that this is just the way that some people are.
Robert Francis has enough charisma to be a good supporting player, but he's simply not strong enough in the lead role. Given time, he might have developed into a big star, but a plane crash in 1955 tragically cut short a promising career. Female co-star May Wynn, aside from having a very good singing voice, is unconvincing in the role of Francis' sweetheart, her acting appearing strained in many of the romance's most intense moments, which aren't, in actual fact, very intense at all. José Ferrer makes an impressive second-billed cameo appearance at the film's climax, playing the lawyer who dutifully defends the accused mutineer, but resents the ship's officers for facilitating, through their own inaction, Cmdr. Queeg's illness; I liked how the conclusion shrewdly blurred the lines of villainy and heroism.
The film's strongest scenes are those that involve Bogart, as his character, a "ticking time-bomb" of denial and paranoia, threatens to destroy all those under his command, and I particularly liked the use of the ball bearings to signify Queeg's escalating nervousness. Nevertheless, Edward Dmytryk, as a director, has yet to impress me as much as I would have liked him to. From the three pictures of his that I've seen  the other two being the hard-boiled noir 'Murder, My Sweet (1944)' and the climbing adventure 'The Mountain (1956)'  he tends to strike me as a very workman-like filmmaker. He gets the job done, of course, and often does a good job of it, but you'd be tentative about blindly choosing one of his films from the DVD shelf. However, I'm perfectly happy to accept recommendations for any Dmytryk films that might break this general mould.