Billy Budd (1962) on Netflix
The British warship HMS Avenger takes Billy Budd off the merchant ship The Rights of Man in 1797. The master-at-arms, John Claggart, works to implicate the naive newcomer in a mutiny.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.8/105,574 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
The British warship HMS Avenger takes Billy Budd from the merchant ship The Rights of Man in 1797. His new shipmates consider him naive and try to school him in their cynicism, but he keeps his optimism, and they find that he stammers when he is anxious. Budd gets nowhere in his attempts to befriend the master-at-arms, John Claggart, a brutal man who rules the crew by flogging. Claggart moves to put Budd on report and link him to a planned mutiny.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Billy Budd (1962)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Terence Stamp's first-ever film role, as Billy Budd, brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, a BAFTA nomination for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles, and a Golden Globe win for New Star of the Year.
- Herman Melville returned to fiction with Billy Budd in late 1888 after 30 years of poetry, died in 1891 with it unfinished, and the manuscript stayed unpublished until a biographer found it in a trunk in a New Jersey home in 1919; it appeared in 1924.
- The original distributors, Warner Bros. Pathe, were unhappy with Billy Budd, particularly its ending, so the Rank Organisation took over distribution of the film.
