A review of THE CAINE MUTINY
"The Current Cinema: Queeg Redivivus," by John McCarten
(The New Yorker, July 3, 1954)
As pictures of the United States Navy go, "The Caine Mutiny" isn't
bad.... [T]he types we meet on the U.S.S. Caine are a rather shallow
lot, but for all their superficiality, they are amusing, and some of
Mr. Wouk's inventions about the made captain of the vessel result in
comic situations of a pretty high order.... I will say that the main
problem in Mr. Wouk's novel concerns a lieutenant commander in the
Regular Navy who gives every evidence...of being crazy. Presumably, he
started stripping his mental gears in childhood and finished off the
process in the North Atlantic before we encounter him in the Pacific.
According to one of the rules of the Navy, a master who is off his
rocker may be relieved of his post by one of his juniors in a member
of extreme peril, and Mr. Wouk attempts to show just why an executive
office serving under such a psychopath might be moved to supercede
him. Obviously, a business of this sort is far from frivolous, but the
movie is least persuasive when it tries to be solemn. Indeed, toward
the end, when the screen writer is striving most sedulously to
interpret Mr. Wouk's odd notion that it was somehow ironic to have
joined the Navy in the nineteen thirties, as the befuddled captain
did, while civilians were out making fortunes on the W.P.A., the thing
becomes an incomprehensible shambles. But I don't think we ought to be
overly troubled by this dubious climax, because there is sufficient
hilarity and derring-do in the picture to offset the philosophical
handicaps.
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