Another recommendation from one of Jami's law professors, and a right rip-snorting tale. Actually, it was surprisingly slow and grounded. This starts with the general seediness of the Caine itself, which is an unglamorous minesweeper. Our protagonist is Ensign Willie Keith (played in one of his tragically few roles by Robert Francis, who looks like an All-American quarterback),
whom we first see graduating (supposedly from the Naval Academy, but it's obviously (to us, anyway) filmed at USC) and experiencing a tug of war between his mother and the woman he loves, a nightclub singer. His mother is a wealthy bigwig and so disapproves both of the Naval career and the woman. But this whole subplot is tiresome and boring, so I won't return to it. Next Keith boards the Caine and is shocked not just by how dilapidated the Caine is ("it's the rust that's holding it together") but how sloppy its crew are. Facial hair, untucked shirts (or no shirts at all) and when he's introduced to his captain, he's sitting in his cabin wrapped only in a towel. However, Keith gets on well with the crew, especially aspiring novelist Lt. Tom Keefer (Fred MacMurray) and straight arrow #2 to the captain, Lt. Steve Maryk (Van Johnson - who has an amazing facial scar),
and even the grunts, which include Lee Marvin in a surprisingly small role as "Meatball". All goes fairly well until the captain is replaced by Captain Queeg, played, of course, by Humphrey Bogart, in one of his last roles and not looking too healthy (which works fine for the role). At first, this is just what the doctor ordered for Ensign Keith, because Queeg is equally appalled by the sloppiness and immediately institutes draconian rules about personal appearance. But he soon takes this too far and is berating Keith for not enforcing the "no untucked shirttails" rule and ignoring the helm, when the Caine circles round and severs the cable that is dragging the minesweeper thingie that is part of a naval exercise they're involved in. Instead of admitting his mistake and retrieving the thingie, Queeg, to avoid being last back in port, insists on claiming that the cable was sub-standard and just snapped, and that it is somebody else's job to collect aforementioned thingie. Things get steadily weirder, not helped by Queeg's nervous habit of clacking two ballbearings in his hand when agitated.
Worst is when they actually see action (the year is 1944) and the Caine is supposed to escort some boats full of Marines as near the beach as possible, Queeg first gets too far ahead of them (presumable to avoid the shelling the boats are getting) and then turns tail and runs before getting near enough to the beach.
This earns him the nickname "Yellowstain" from the crew. Afterwards he gathers the officers and gives a sort-of-half-admission-half-justification of the failing, which just makes him look contemptible. Soon afterwards our writer Keefer starts whispering in Maryk's ear that Queeg is a classic paranoiac (clearly the psychological obsession du jour), and that he, Maryk, might have to relieve him of command. At first Maryk angrily dismisses this kind of talk - he's no fan of Queeg, but he's a loyal Navy man - but we soon see Maryk worriedly reading from a book called "Mental Disorders", and writing in his journal at some other strange behavior. Worst of all is the Strawberry Incident, where Queeg demonstrates (using sand)
that the portions the officers ate of frozen strawberries would have left at least a pint behind, and yet there are no frozen strawberries, ergo some were stolen! This, he insists, is because somebody has made a copy of the key to the larder, something that happened when he was a young ensign and he solved a cheese-theft. However, in reality the mess-workers ate the strawberries, and what's more, a friend of our main three characters reveals to them that he told Queeg he saw this happen, but Queeg refused to believe him and insists that the entire ship be searched. Maryk is finally convinced that Queeg should be reported to the Admiral (who is in a nearby ship, as they are traveling in a fleet at the moment) and convinces Keith and Keefer to come with him. But once there, Keefer, the man who started this whole thing, gets cold feet, rightly pointing out that none of the incidents that have convinced them will sound convincing to someone on a well-run ship. So they return to their ship, in a hurry, because a typhoon is coming. And it's in the typhoon that Queeg's nerve snaps, and Maryk is forced to relieve him of command to stop him steering the ship to disaster. Hence, the title. Thus begins the trial that makes up the final act of the film, and José Ferrer, playing Maryk's defense attorney, comes in to steal the film.
And the trial manages to be gripping without being played for melodrama (a bit like the one in Anatomy of a Murder), complete with a surprise betrayal and a Bogart meltdown. Solid meat-and-potatoes 50's epic film-making, and a great late performance from Bogart, proving that he could play tragic and weaselly just as well as heroic and hard-bitten.
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