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Volume 31, No. 4 (October 2000) Reprinted from "Admiralty Law in Popular Culture", a special issue published in 2000 by the Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce, a quarterly devoted to maritime law, with the permission of the Journal and the Jefferson Law Book Company. The Caine Mutiny: Not Just One but Many Legal Dramas NORMAN L. ROSENBERG* I INTRODUCTION The film can also be viewed, however, as a more extended representation of legal issues. Although The Caine Mutiny certainly respects the "realities" of Navy law and procedures, it can also be seen as a sophisticated look, through the codes and conventions of Classical Hollywood, at issues that both encompass and reach beyond maritime law. THE LEGAL DRAMAS OF THE U.S.S. CAINE A brief "legal drama" under Queeg's command underscores his devotion to black-letter law.3 When a seaman, his shirt untucked in violation of Navy regulations, interrupts the meeting to deliver a message, Queeg warns that he will not tolerate any more "flapping shirttails." He appoints Keith the ship's Morale Officer and charges him with seeing that crewmembers not only sport tucked-in shirts but regulation haircuts and cleanly shaven faces. The sequence also shows, however, the officers' divided judgment on Queeg's approach to maritime law. Keith clearly sides with the new captain, but a camera pan reveals the dissents, by means of facial expression, being filed by all of the other reserve officers. The camera also offers a close-up of Queeg's quivering hands nervously rolling a pair of steel ball-bearings, the most famous visual and aural symbol in a film loaded with symbolism. Keith's optimistic judgment, however, cannot easily be shaken, even as another legal drama quickly follows. The Caine is carrying out a routine assignment to tow targets for gunnery practice when Queeg begins to dress-down a seaman named "Horrible" (Claude Akins) for an untucked shirt. The film sardonically comments on the captain's legal jeremiad about the need to obey orders faithfully. Remaining faithful to Queeg's order of "right standard rudder," the helmsman keeps the Caine on a circular course, while the captain is lecturing Horrible on Navy law, and takes it over the target's tow-line. Refusing to acknowledge that he has ordered the Caine to sail in a complete circle and cut its target adrift, Queeg blames the mishap on a defective tow-line. Then, he files an obviously false report so he will not have "to answer a lot of questions about something that's not our fault." The Caine's next legal drama shakes even Keith's faith in his new captain's claim of embracing a by-the-book approach to naval law when Queeg generously interprets an order to guide an amphibious Marine invasion within 1,000 yards of a Japanese-held island beachhead. The film portrays Queeg, who had come to the Caine after surviving numerous German U-Boat attacks in the North Atlantic, as unnerved by his first combat experience in the South Pacific. He commands Maryk, who is handling the ship, to break away short of what his executive officer judges to be the 1,000-yard mark. Claiming that his own calculations show that the Caine has already carried out its orders, Queeg drops a yellow dye-marker to guide the trailing landing vessels and steers his ship away from the line of fire. Once the Caine reaches safe waters, several interrelated legal dramas seek to reach a judgment on Queeg's conduct. First, the officers debate the issue on their own. Although Keith insists that "there must be a reason for what he did," Lieutenant Tom Keefer (Fred MacMurray) charges Queeg with "a lack of intestinal fortitude" and dubs him "Old Yellowstain." Other officers side with Keefer and render judgment in the form of a hastily composed ballad, "The Yellowstain Blues." Even Keith joins in on the refrain. Only Maryk dissents from the anti-Queeg chorus, but his judgment is appealed when Queeg calls a post-invasion meeting, again represented as a legal drama, of the Caine's officers. Clearly shaken--the steel ball-bearings are constantly clanging on the film's soundtrack--Queeg puts himself on trial. The camera shoots him (and the film's iconic star) head-on so that Queeg is simultaneously speaking to his fellow officers and to the movie audience--both of which are asked, in effect, to sit in judgment of what they have just witnessed. In contrast to the earlier sequence, during which Queeg had expounded confidently on a book-anchored approach to naval law, he now haltingly offers a kind of legalistic confession. Queeg pleadingly invites his officers to respond to his revised legal credo and promises to listen respectfully. But as in the earlier, parallel sequence, his speech on the nature of maritime legal culture provokes only silence. B. Keith, Maryk, and Keefer as "Judges" After Queeg flees to his cabin, the film assigns the task of adjudicating this legal drama to Keith, Maryk, and Keefer; not surprisingly, they each submit different judgments. The young ensign goes first. Although Queeg's confessional speech "almost made me feel sorry for him," Willie simplistically concludes that the captain "turned yellow the first time we got into action." Maryk goes next and counters that Queeg's admission was "the closest he could come to an apology" and chastises the Caine's officers for their silence. Queeg is a "tired man," worn out from combat in the North Atlantic; "his nerves are shot," the combat-seasoned Maryk insists. "We could have backed him up." But it is Keefer who renders what will quickly become the controlling opinion: Queeg is suffering from "acute paranoia." Conceding his lack of any formal training in psychiatry, Keefer insists that his profession as a novelist fully supports his judgment on Queeg's mental condition. Keefer's opinion--an ad hoc mix of medical and literary discourse--comes to shape much of the rest of the film's legal story. Keith, now wavering, agrees that "Tom does make sense," but Maryk explodes in anger. Grabbing a Bible, Maryk swears a solemn oath that he will report Keefer if he issues any more judgments about Queeg's mental problems. Almost immediately, though, the film cuts from a shot of Maryk with the Bible to one of him reading another book, Mental Disorders. And, then, the executive officer picks up a small, green book. A voice-over by Maryk, the first use of this cinematic technique in the film, indicates that this is to be a "medical log," in which the executive officer will seek to document Keefer's opinion that the Caine's commanding officer might be "mentally disturbed." As voice-overs by Maryk continue to mark the voyage of the Caine--and the progress of his log--evidence to sustain Keefer's judgment seems readily available. First, Queeg throws a childlike tantrum after the ship's projectionist, believing he is honoring Queeg's request that he never be asked to watch another western movie, fails to inform him of the showing of a Hopalong Cassidy film. Interpreting this oversight as "calculated disrespect," Queeg decrees that the entire crew will see no film for 30 days. This same stylistic contrast, between Maryk's words and Queeg's actions, frames the film's next legal drama--and the next link in the evidentiary chain against Queeg. In violation of regulations and Queeg's orders, some crewmembers forgo the wearing of full battle gear during a training drill. While Queeg is throwing another tantrum, crewmembers are tossing helmets and life-jackets back-and-forth until every seaman is attired in by-the-book battle dress. Queeg, unable to identify the one-time culprits who are now dressed in the same manner as the rest of the crew, lays down the law by withdrawing all liberty privileges, for everyone, for the next three months. The Caine Mutiny employs this stylistic pattern once more in order to represent the film's most bizarre legal drama, the case of a missing quart of frozen strawberries. Insisting that the remaining portion of a gallon of strawberries, earmarked for the Caine's officers, has been stolen, Queeg appoints Maryk, who is simultaneously running his secret investigation of his captain's mental state, as the head of a "Board of Investigation" and charges him with finding the thief. Maryk's official inquiry turns up nothing. Queeg, however, overrules this judgment and issues his own, based on a precedent from his own legal experience in the Navy. While a young ensign, Queeg claims, he solved a similar case, involving pilfered cheese, by proving that someone had made a duplicate key to the ship's icebox. He insists that the Caine's strawberries disappeared in the same way. Thus, he charges his officers with conducting a shipboard dragnet in which every crewman will be strip-searched and in which every key will be confiscated, tagged, and tested against the lock on the ship's icebox. The Caine's officers "can have a little fun for a change," Queeg chortles, "now that we've got a little detective work to do." Meanwhile, Maryk's unofficial inquiry judges the key-hunt to be additional evidence of Queeg's mental incapacity. No sane captain would turn a warship upside down, Keefer argues, to find a key which likely does not exist. He also introduces Maryk to yet another book, Naval Regulations, and points him to Article 184, "required reading on the Caine." The possibility that a mentally-impaired captain can lawfully be removed from command, Keefer suggests, has become a necessity on the Caine, and he advises Maryk to memorize Article 184. As keys are being collected and seamen strip-searched--and Maryk is pondering Keefer's interpretation of Article 184--the executive officer's unofficial investigation discovers new evidence. Ensign Harding, who is being transferred from the Caine, reveals that he not only had seen the mess stewards finishing off the frozen strawberries but had reported this to Queeg! The captain's response, Harding claims, was to threaten to hold up his transfer unless he withheld this information from Maryk's official inquiry. Convinced that his secret inquiry is now complete, Maryk asks Keefer and Keith to accompany him--and his log--as he makes an Article 184 case against Queeg to Admiral William F. Halsey, whose aircraft carrier New Jersey is currently anchored near the Caine. The next, brief legal drama underscores the way in which The Caine Mutiny uses cinematic grammar to highlight the fragmented nature of the legal field. The camera films the three officers from the beaten-up Caine, Maryk clutching his log, in medium and close-up shots, but employs long, overhead shots to represent Halsey's sleek, ultramodern New Jersey. As the three complainants wait to see Admiral Halsey, and as military music fills the sound track and the film cuts back-and-forth between them and the carrier's vast deck, Keefer suddenly informs Maryk that his log will mean something very different on the New Jersey than on the Caine. The legal debate among the three officers parallels the visual contrast that the film has just constructed. "This is the real Navy, with real officers, not Queegs. The Caine's a freak, a floating mistake," Keefer argues. Maryk resists. Is not his log correct? Of course, it is "correct," Keefer responds, but only on the Caine. When read in the context of the legal culture on board Halsey's New Jersey, it would most likely be interpreted as a legal narrative in which a captain is trying to enforce discipline on a recalcitrant crew. He warns Maryk, who wants to join the regular Navy after the war, that presenting such a flimsy case to Admiral Halsey will mean the end of any post-war naval career. This three-person legal panel takes a quick vote. Keith sides with Keefer; Maryk still wants to see Halsey; and Keefer casts the deciding ballot. "I pass," he says. Left in the minority, Maryk cancels the meeting with Halsey. Having implicitly "passed" on his chance to invoke the consultative mechanism outlined in Article 184, Maryk faces his next legal drama alone. The Caine Mutiny seems, however, to make Maryk's judgment in this next case an easy one. Caught in a raging typhoon, both the aging minesweeper and its captain seem overmatched. The film shows the ship beginning to break apart; Queeg, apparently paralyzed by fear, refuses to steer a different course, one that Maryk considers absolutely necessary to the Caine's survival. After the captain and his executive officer give the helmsman conflicting orders, Maryk calmly announces that, by virtue of the legal authority of Article 184, he is relieving Queeg and taking over command of the Caine. Keith sides with the executive officer, and the helmsman turns the ship in the direction Maryk had ordered. The Caine stays afloat, but Queeg predicts that all of its officers will stand trial, alongside Maryk, for mutiny. C. Barney Greenwald "for the Defense" Once back in San Francisco, Maryk and Keith, now accused of mutiny, begin to confront problems of a different sort. Asked if he is their lawyer, Barney Greenwald replies that he is an attorney but one who is not sure that he wants to represent them. Eight other lawyers, he claims, have already turned down the job. "I think what you've done stinks." Their claim that the sinking of three other ships during the typhoon justified Maryk's action will not wash; 194 ships stayed afloat without their captains being removed, Greenwald sarcastically notes. Maryk is either a "fool or a mutineer. There's no third possibility." Greenwald spends most of the time with his prospective clients engaging in several pointed exchanges with an officer who is not facing court-martial, Tom Keefer. The Caine's communications officer confidently repeats his diagnosis of Queeg's paranoia and sloughs off Greenwald's inquiry into his credentials as a psychiatrist. It is a novelist's "business," Keefer pontificates, "to be a judge of human behavior." Making this kind of legal-medical judgment, Greenwald counters, might open Keefer himself to a charge of inciting to mutiny, an offense mentioned in Article 186 of the Navy Regulations. Although Greenwald claims he would prefer to be prosecuting the case, he does agree to defend Maryk and Keith. The prosecution's case for "making a mutiny against legal authority" seems to be a straightforward and--despite what the film has shown about daily life on board the Caine--persuasive one. Under any reasonable interpretation of the Navy Regulations, nothing that happened on board the Caine justified removing a captain who was legally sane, Judge Advocate Challee insists. Ironically, Challee's argument resembles the one that had been laid out by Keefer aboard the New Jersey: Queeg's conduct, prior to the typhoon, can be best interpreted as that of a captain trying to bring greater discipline to his ship. Challee carefully builds his case. He forces Keith to admit that he knows nothing about navigating a minesweeper through a typhoon and that he "hates" Queeg. Meanwhile, Keefer's testimony is a prosecutor's dream. Now informed about Article 186, the novelist denies any special insight into human behavior and portrays Queeg as a by-the-book captain who wanted to instill discipline on board the Caine. Keefer also claims to have been "flabbergasted" after learning that Maryk had invoked Article 184. Finally, Maryk himself admits to having no expertise in recognizing mental illness and cannot prove that he, rather than Queeg, knew the best way to ride out a typhoon. Unsettled by Challee's questioning, he even concedes that, as the judge advocate has framed the issues, it seems that he might be guilty as charged. Barney Greenwald's defense strategy is hardly straightforward. He allows Keefer's apparently perjured testimony to go unchallenged. His brief questioning of Keith raises the "Old Yellowstain" issue but he does not, after an objection from Challee and a caution from the presiding judge, pursue the matter of Queeg's alleged cowardice. Greenwald does momentarily shake Dr. Dickson, Challee's psychiatric expert; with help from Challee, however, Dr. Dickson adroitly refocuses his testimony. Although he has had no experience with naval officers other than Queeg, he has examined many other professionals with similar, "paranoid" tendencies who could still make complex command decisions and has even written a book on the subject. "Smart guy, Challee," Greenwald whispers to Maryk, after the judge advocate finishes the rehabilitation of his expert witness. But Greenwald also advises Maryk that he's "just seen the first act; the finale is still to come." The finale to the court-martial features the Academy Award-nominated performance of Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg. After offering a confident justification of his actions, Queeg gradually disintegrates during Greenwald's questioning, much as he had on board the Caine during the typhoon. (Close-up shots capture Queeg's tear-filled eyes and the steel ball-bearings clanking in his hands.) Queeg's collapse, in fact, is so complete that the film needs no scene in which the judges render a verdict; by the time Queeg is mercifully dismissed from the witness stand, acquittal is a foregone conclusion. CONCLUSION The half-drunken Greenwald begins by indicting the "half guilty" officers, including the client whose acquittal he has just secured. He decided to take Maryk's case, Greenwald now claims, only because he discovered that the wrong man was on trial. But to stay within his role as defense counsel, he had to "torpedo" Queeg, a task that has left him with a guilty conscience. Queeg, despite his performance on board the Caine and on the witness stand, still ranks as a hero because he had taken on a job during the 1930s that Greenwald and all of the other reserve officers in the room had disdained. "We knew you couldn't make any money in the service. So who did the dirty work for us? Queeg did!" His courtroom narrative on behalf of Maryk omitted one important detail: the post-yellow dye marker meeting at which Queeg implicitly confessed his misdeeds and asked for help. But all of the reserve officers who are now celebrating Maryk's acquittal had "turned on" Queeg and withheld the "loyalty he needed." "You work with [a captain] because he's got the job or you're no good." Maryk concedes the plausibility of Greenwald's charge, and Keith wonders if "we're all guilty." "You're learning, Willie," Greenwald replies. But the prosecutor directs his most pointed barbs at Tom Keefer, "the Caine's favorite author, the Shakespeare whose testimony nearly sunk us all." Greenwald cannot, as Maryk is prepared to do, let the officer who should have been on trial for "making a mutiny" go unindicted. He invites the other officers to read the budding novelist's testimony at the court-martial; it seemed as if Keefer hardly knew Captain Queeg. Greenwald charges that Keefer, because of his contempt for Queeg and the Navy, scripted a series of legal dramas, based on his literary musings about mental incapacity, that ended with Maryk's invocation of Article 184. Greenwald, after a mock toast to the "real author of the Caine Mutiny," symbolically concludes his indictment by tossing a glass of champagne--a yellow-stained liquid--in Keefer's face. The other officers render their verdict by leaving Keefer, standing alone, in the party room. The film provides no appeal from this judgment. |
