Saturday 2 August 2008

The Caine Mutiny...

Yep, another Bogart movie from my collection, one that - as it was on at the same time as Action In The North Atlantic, hadn't been watched, despite being sat there for five and a half years.

Similar to North Atlantic, there isn't much Bogart - yet he's headlining the flick - and, indeed, the simple flippancy of marriage crops up again. It really is amazing how many movies from "back in the day" took marriage so care free. It is odd to think of people only saying that now marriage is taken lightly, but if marriage was taken as lightly back in the day as it was in the movies of the era, then there's no room to complain.

Indeed, divorce has shot up, so maybe it's a case of these days people are actually bothering to end their flippant marriages? Who knows, back to The Caine Mutiny, I did get quite into it - even though it's not got much in the way of action, and it does go on a bit ... however, the main interest is indeed Bogart (when he finally turns up on screen that is). How so? He's playing a mentally disturbed, pain-in-the-arse, rule-Nazi Captain of the lazily-staffed Caine.

Rather than playing the hero, here in his later career years, Bogart plays a fairly tragic figure. One who has most likely become shell-shocked by years of service, a paranoiac, a stickler for detail and harsh punishment. Interesting stuff indeed.

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