The Caine Mutiny (1954)

Humphrey Bogart gives one of his most powerful and surprising performances as Lt. Commander Queeg, the psychologically fragile commanding officer of the U.S.S. Caine during World War II who, exhibiting increasingly erratic behavior, is relieved from his command by his junior officers, played by Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray and Robert Francis. Adapting Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize–winning 1951 novel, producer Stanley Kramer and director Edward Dmytryk craft an incisive examination of power and its institutions, and the unfolding and resolution of a crisis in leadership. The film's first half aboard the Caine establishes the reality of life on a wartime destroyer minesweeper, while the final acts shift to the court martial hearing against the junior officers accused of mutiny, resulting in one of the screen's all-time-great courtroom dramas. The outstanding cast also includes José Ferrer, Tom Tully and E.G. Marshall; among the enlisted men, look for early appearances by a young Lee Marvin as "Meatball" and Claude Akins as "Horrible."

Directed by Edward Dmytryk

1954 | USA | English language | DCP

Rated NR