The Caine Mutiny (Columbia) has plenty of what it takes to bring people into the theaters—a famous title, Technicolor and four famous names: Humphrey Bogart José Ferrer. Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray. But it has less of what it takes to make a first-rate film. The movie is handsome and expert almost to the point of slickness: it is sometimes a little cold and loud where it needs the flare and hiss of honest anger.
Producer Stanley Kramer attempted the almost impossible. Four studios had dropped option on the bestselling novel before Kramer picked it up, mainly because the U.S. Navy had refused approval of the picture. In return for the Navy's cooperation (Says Kramer: "I was practically in command of Pearl Harbor for five weeks"), the moviemakers had to endure some niggling at minor points. In the outcome, even the detailed 'tween-decks griping of Herman Wouk's novel has been effectively realigned into a proper topside salute to all things Navy.
Mutiny's heaviest handicap is built right into its biggest box-office advantage: the fame of the book the movie was made from. Since a large portion of the public has studied the case of Captain Queeg right down to the last notorious strawberry, the moviemakers may have felt obligated to reproduce the main details of the case precisely as the public remembered them. As a result, the camera spends so much time swallowing evidential strawberries that it hardly has time to note that a war is going on, or that real people are involved in it.
There is, however, quite enough technical magic in the famous episodes—the target incident that gives the first hint of Queeg's queerness, the dye-marker affair that sicklies him o'er with a yellow stain of panic. These scenes, for all their episodic quality, cling together like the well-machined surfaces they are.
Unhappily, the climactic court-martial scene leaves something to be desired. The buildup is too rapid, the characters are too little drawn out by the suction of suspense that is too soon released. Nevertheless, the scene is charged with drama, effectively paced by Director Edward (The Juggler) Dmytryk, and well played. The massive closeup of Queeg in disintegration is almost as pitiful and terrifying as it was meant to be.
Bogart as Queeg is never less than everything the book said he was; sometimes he adds a quality of almost noble despair to the captain's sufferings. Van Johnson, who has hardened in recent years into a competent and calculating performer, brings off the square-headed Maryk surprisingly well. Fred MacMurray looks a little too dumb and stiff to be the fast-talking Keefer, but Jose Ferrer, so long as he is not required to do anything more than leer, is suitably aggressive as Barney Greenwald. E. G. Marshall has a fine stretch as the trial judge advocate.
Playgirl (Universal) is a cautionary tale for small-town girls who come to the big city. The approximate moral: when you let a man set you up in an apartment, make sure he is not a gangster, because, after all, a girl has to be careful of what people say.