I Watch Films: The Caine Mutiny

The Caine Mutiny

It’s 1943 and Willie Keith, a newly commissioned ensign fresh from a 90 day officer training course, reports aboard the USS Caine, a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific Fleet. The ship’s been in combat for eighteen months (and not swept a mine in all that time). They’re tired and sloppy and the ship needs some work.

After finally settling in and getting on top of the job they get a new captain, Lt Cmdr Queeg, who is something of a martinet. Amongst his early orders are that every man must have his shirt tucked in. While towing a target for gunnery practice he is so distracted by telling off Keith for one of the sailors being improperly dressed they run over their towline, which he then blames on faulty equipment.

One of the officers thinks that Queeg is paranoid and convinces the second in command to keep a log. After Queeg turns the ship upside down in an effort to find some missing strawberries (he uncovered a stolen cheese on a previous ship) despite being told who stole them, they nearly go to the Admiral but chicken out. Eventually, in the middle of a typhoon, Queeg refuses to change course despite losing the mast and radar, and the second in command relieves him, backed by Keith.

There’s a trial. A moral defence of Queeg is offered; that while all the guys here who’d joined up for the war had been making money during peace (or going to Princeton in Keith’s case) Queeg had been serving his country keeping it safe, and when he asked for help they didn’t give it to him because they didn’t like him.

Hugely influential and it hasn’t even aged that poorly, though the romantic subplot is enormously disconnected from the main story (in brief: Keith is the only son of a rich upper class widow (who tries to use influence to get him onto an Admiral’s staff, which he refuses), his girlfriend is a singer). Based on a novel by Herman Wouk who served aboard destroyer-minesweepers in the Pacific in WW2 the minutiae of naval life, the tension between regular navy and those there for the duration, and the technical aspects are well handled.

Watch This: For a serious WW2 naval film with some things to say about it
Don’t Watch This: Men trying and failing at sailing a ship isn’t for you