Mark of Caine

Rating: 6/10 (16 March 2011)

Those HUAC hearings sure knocked the stuffing out of director Dmytryk....Is this movie by the man who made that scorching indictment of antisemitism, Crossfire? Fraid so. Not that it's all that bad, but he pulls so many punches here that all dramatic tension this movie should have had just drains away. You get the feeling he was so afraid of getting into hot water with the Navy that he deflated the central point of the movie: was Queeg incompetent or not? Answer: yes, but he couldn't help it. His officers weren't nice to him,see? No,not really. If that was all it took to send him over the brink, he should have been a ferry skipper, not a Navy officer. All actors have been much better in other movies, and dearly as i love Bogart, even his performance was below his usual level. Strawberries, indeed! But the final insult to intelligence was Ferrer's drunken rant at the end,where he accuses everybody of having ulterior motives for accusing Queeg. Worst of all of course is McMurray's character: an intellectual! Who writes books! Sickening! At least Queeg never went to Princeton, or something along those lines. In short: you've won, but hang your heads in shame.Why? For not letting Queeg sink the ship? The captain may be bonkers, but he's still your commander? It seems to me that Dmytryk put in this ridiculous rant to assure the powers that be that mutiny is wrong at all times. The mutineers were right in saying Queeg was crazy, but wrong for disobeying orders. So both parties were both wrong AND right? Now I'M the one who's going crazy! It's too bad this movie was made in the creatively crippling Fifties, and not ten years before or after. You might say Dmytryk was a bit like Queeg: he had the abilities to excel, but lacked the courage to take charge. Now this movie, like Queeg's ship, just goes round in circles.