The Caine Mutiny (1954) on Netflix
Ensign Willie Keith joins the minesweeper USS Caine and meets executive officer Lieutenant Steve Maryk. Its new captain, Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, tightens discipline.
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- IMDb7.6/1031,348 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes95%
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Plot summary
Ensign Willie Keith finishes midshipman's school and reports to the USS Caine, an old converted minesweeper in the Pacific. The executive officer is Lieutenant Steve Maryk, and the communications officer is Lieutenant Tom Keefer, who is writing a novel. Keith is unimpressed with the Caine's captain and pleased to learn a new commanding officer is coming. Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg arrives and cracks down on a crew that has grown lax, which makes him unpopular, though Keith at first admires him. During a gunnery exercise, Queeg berates Keith and Keefer about a sailor's appearance; the ship runs over the towline, and the target is set adrift. Queeg tries to keep the incident quiet.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Caine Mutiny (1954)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While filming the scene off Oahu in which Van Johnson's Maryk swims fully clothed to retrieve a line, a real Navy rifleman shot a shark that was approaching the actor, saving his life; the sharks never appear on camera.
- Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn knew Humphrey Bogart wanted the role of Captain Queeg and used that fact to force the star to settle for far less than his usual $200,000 salary.
- The film and Herman Wouk's novel influenced the drafters of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on removing a President; John D. Feerick, who helped draft it, told The Washington Post in 2018 the film was a "live depiction" of such a crisis.
- Michael Caine, born Maurice Micklewhite, had to choose a new stage name immediately from a Leicester Square phone box; a Bogart fan, he spotted The Caine Mutiny playing at the Odeon cinema and took his name from the title.
- The U.S. Navy was uncomfortable with the film's mentally unbalanced captain and the word "mutiny" in its title, but after 15 months of negotiations it approved Stanley Roberts' script and gave Columbia access to ships, planes, Pearl Harbor and Naval Station Treasure Island.
- Novelist Herman Wouk wrote the first screenplay draft, but director Edward Dmytryk replaced him with Stanley Roberts, who quit when told to cut the script to two hours; Michael Blankfort made the 50 pages of cuts.
- RCA Victor planned an LP with the climactic court-martial dialogue on one side, but Herman Wouk called it an infringement on his Broadway play and threatened to block future Columbia adaptations of his work; Harry Cohn yanked the record.
- Columbia claimed the film's courtroom scene, running 977 feet, was the longest continuous courtroom scene without a cut, surpassing a scene in The Life of Emile Zola.
