Tag: Lee Marvin

Rapid Response: The Caine Mutiny

“The Caine Mutiny” aims to paint a uniquely tragic figure, but even Humphrey Bogart’s great performance falls short.

On paper, “The Caine Mutiny” instantly reminds of “K-19: The Widowmaker” or “Mutiny on the Bounty,” which this movie even slyly alludes to as Humphrey Bogart makes his excellent and provocative introduction as Lt. Cmdr. Queeg. And yet far from a film about revolution, rebellion or loyalties, “The Caine Mutiny” is dedicated to the Navy and those who have suffered great trauma due to the effects of war. It’s a film about paranoia and mental illness, not morals or valor.

And yet working against “The Caine Mutiny” right out of the gate is that we’ve now developed a deeper, more complex understanding of human psychology than this movie has to offer. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a well-known term today, and although films like “The Best Days of Our Lives” were peddling it for melodrama earlier than this film, Director Edward Dymtryk tries to make the ruthless perfectionist Captain Queeg into a uniquely tragic figure.

Brought to manage the minesweeper Caine during World War II, Queeg’s new crew quickly suspects that his affinity for seamen with their shirts tucked in or the location of a key have rendered him mentally incapable of helming their ship. Bogart convincingly barks orders and demonstrates fear, and he received an Oscar nomination for the role, but the film neglects informing us what personal war demons he may carry. He’s a flat, silly character, and our only emotional attachment comes in the form of him manipulating steel ball bearings nervously and in Bogart’s magnetic face during one of the film’s few arresting close-ups during its climax.

Some of the performances, including Jose Ferrer’s sarcastic Lt. Greenwald, Fred MacMurray’s lying scumbag of an officer and Van Johnson’s calm, careful first mate help raise the caliber of “The Caine Mutiny,” but too much is wasted on the debut performances of Robert Francis and May Wynn. Their romance is a dud, and his attachment to his mother is a plot line left hanging. It would be less distracting if the on-board events were more compelling, but Queeg’s hunt for a quart of strawberries is the absolute pits if it’s made to be taken seriously, and the resulting courtroom drama leaves little to the imagination on a narrative or visual level.

“The Caine Mutiny” was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor Humphrey Bogart and Best Screenplay, but lost out to “On the Waterfront.” That film depicted what you could call a paranoid character, and it did so with bounds more gravitas than this film unfortunately.

Rapid Response: The Dirty Dozen

Only in a movie with Lee Marvin (and maybe Henry Fonda) could Charles Bronson look like less of a bad ass.

That’s kind of the appeal of “The Dirty Dozen,” a movie with a ridiculously famous cast of already massive and would-be massive stars (Jim Brown, Donald Sutherland, John Cassavetes) that was not only a shockingly violent war film but one that defined a generation of war films for years to come.

In many ways, “The Dirty Dozen’s” legacy is more interesting than the movie itself. Mark Harris’s book “Pictures at a Revolution” describes how Robert Aldrich’s film became the biggest box office hit of the year by celebrating a black man killing Germans, by appealing to a counter-culture, anti-establishment movement and by being the first war movie to outwardly call attention to the Vietnam War. Harris writes that the film reached an audience of war fans bored with the genre and craving to see some gritty, tough guy action and teens who disliked the war movies their parents did.

“It would have made a very good, very acceptable 1945 war picture. But I don’t think that a good 1945 war picture is a good 1967 war picture,” Aldrich was quoted in Harris’s book. And in that way, it was one of the many films that year that revolutionized filmmaking.

The problem is, the film remains a clumsy, long action movie that doesn’t really get interesting until the two big battles in the last hour. It spends a lot of time developing at least half of the dozen war criminals assigned to Major Reisman’s (Marvin) command, but the writing doesn’t have the sharp tenacity or wit to make it truly compelling.

Exploitation films and similar, even more polarizing fare like Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” merely two years later would surpass it in the violence department, and New Wave Hollywood directors were not far away from making less than oblique statements about the Vietnam War.

Still, it’s influence is obvious. Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” is intentionally lifted from this film’s concept, not to mention the copycat Enzo Castellari version only years after “Dirty Dozen.”

But what bugged me was how almost hokey the film felt. I think the whole construction montage for instance is time that could easily be trimmed from the film, and the score really Mickey Mouse’s it in these moments as well. More time should’ve been spent highlighting the film’s theme of authority and power dynamics to make this an outwardly counter cultural film. That would’ve made it more timeless as well.

“Dirty Dozen” does aim to have fun, plain and simple, and that’s its appeal. But there are better ways to spend your time.