The Caine Mutiny: Collector's Edition

Humphrey Bogart delivers an emotionally charged, Oscar-nominated performance as Lt. Cmdr. Philip Francis Queeg, a new captain aboard the WWII minesweeper USS Caine who promises to make the vessel shipshape with a vengeance (“there are four ways of doing things on my ship: the right way, the wrong way, the Navy way, and my way,” he tells his junior officers in their first meeting). Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk, director Edward Dmytryk's 1954 hit adaptation boasts a sterling cast—Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, José Ferrer, E.G. Marshall (with bit parts by Claude Akins and Lee Marvin, among others)—in a compelling tale about a mentally unbalanced skipper (in one famous sequence, Queeg launches an all-ship investigation into a missing quart of strawberries), who is relieved of his command during a typhoon by Lt. Steve Maryk (Johnson), an upstanding officer gradually won over by Lt. Tom Keefer's (MacMurray) argument that Queeg is a paranoid coward. The ensuing court martial scenes in which Maryk's defense counsel Barney Greenwald (Ferrer) leads Queeg through a series of questions that cause him to self-destruct remind us of Bogart's thespian brilliance. Also nominated for Best Picture, The Caine Mutiny—which features a stirring, lush Max Steiner score—is presented with a solid transfer in this “collector's edition,” which also features an audio commentary by film critics Richard Peña and Ken Bowser, and a two-part retrospective documentary. Trivia note: actor Maurice Micklewhite took his stage name from this film, becoming Michael Caine. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)