Search - The Caine Mutiny on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1954 DVD Release: 12/15/1998 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV,Pan and Scan Edition: Special Collection Audio Tracks: English, French, Spanish Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 5 mins Studio: Columbia TriStar Members Wishing: 4 Genres: Drama, War, Sea Adventure, Courtroom Drama See Also: The Caine Mutiny [Collector's Edition]

Robert Francis is at the center of the story as Willis Keith, a newly-minted ensign assigned to the destroyer/minesweeper U.S.S. Caine during World War II. Soon after his arrival, the ship gets a new captain, Lt. Comdr. Philip Francis Queeg Humphrey Bogart, a tough, no-nonsense veteran officer who tries to turns the crew into proper sailors and the Caine into a tight ship, engendering resentment from some of the men and several of his officers. A veteran of difficult years of service for too long, Queeg has insecurities about himself, his command, and his career that begin to manifest themselves as spells of temper over small details that cause him to make mistakes. Lt.Keefer (Fred MacMurray), the glib-tongued communications officer, begins making suggestions to the ship's sincere but overburdened first officer, Lt. Steve Maryk (Van Johnson), that Queeg may have mental problems. Maryk initially rejects these suggestions, and tries to support the captain, but conditions deteriorate to the point where Maryk is forced to relieve Queeg of command, and is charged -- along with Keith, who supported him -- with mutiny. Enter Lt. Barney Greenwald (José Ferrer), a lawyer in civilian life, who reluctantly agrees to help them, mostly out of sympathy for the impossible predicament in which Maryk has found himself trapped. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Humphrey Bogart - Capt. Philip Francis Queeg
José Ferrer - Lt. Barney Greenwald
Van Johnson - Lt. Steve Maryk
Fred MacMurray - Lt. Tom Keefer
Robert Francis - Ensign Willie Keith
May Wynn - May Wynn

If the switch to DVD has accomplished nothing else, it's forced the studios to do new transfers from upgraded sources of their classic films. Nowhere is this more to be appreciated than with Edward Dmytryk's The Caine Mutiny. The movie went through a couple of laserdisc editions that never looked half as good as the film-to-video transfer used for the DVD. And anyone who grew up watching the relatively faded, flat presentations of The Caine Mutiny on television will be amazed by the color in the opening credits, the beautiful flesh tones in the nightclub scene near the beginning of the movie, and the sharpness of the skin textures everywhere. The film was released in 1954, a year into the advent of the era of widescreen movies, and although it wasn't shot with anamorphic lenses, it was intended to be shown in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, which is how it is offered on one side of this disc. A comparison between the full-screen and letterboxed versions leads one to favor the latter -- the framing on the full-screen film is too tight throughout and misses the subtleties of camera movement (especially in the climactic trial scene) that the director was aiming for.
The movie has been treated well, with 28 chapters that mark out all of the highlights. The menu pops up automatically on start-up, and the disc comes with the trailer from The Caine Mutiny and also, for unexplained reasons, one from another Bogart movie, Dead Reckoning, which has never surfaced on DVD (though one wishes it would). The trailer for The Caine Mutiny is fascinating as a document of the impact of the original novel by Herman Wouk; in its time, it was one of the biggest-selling novels of the 20th century -- rivaling -Gone With the Wind -- and the trailer was able to mention specific scenes from the novel with the confidence that most filmgoers would know exactly what it was referring to. The insert that comes with the disc purports to tell the background on the movie, but it really doesn't; there were behind-the-scenes studio machinations on The Caine Mutiny that had a lot to do with making it as profitable as it was, and it also bailed Columbia Pictures out of a losing contract with producer Stanley Kramer, none of which is mentioned. Those omissions, however, detract not at all from the film itself, which hasn't looked or sounded this good in decades. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide