Billy Budd (1962)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

Peter Ustinov

Writers:

Herman Melville (novel)
Louis O. Coxe (play) ...

Release Date:

12 November 1962 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure

Tagline:

TERENCE STAMP A new face! A new talent! A great new star discovery!

Plot:

Billy is an innocent, naive seaman in the British Navy in 1797. When the ship's sadistic master-at-arms is murdered, Billy is accused and tried.

Plot Keywords:

Mutiny | Depravity | Discipline | Navy | Napoleonic Wars

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 7 nominations

Cast

Robert Ryan	...	John Claggart, Master d'Arms
Peter Ustinov	...	Edwin Fairfax Vere, Post Captain
Melvyn Douglas	...	The Dansker, sailmaker
Paul Rogers	...	Philip Seymour, 1st Lieutenant
John Neville	...	Julian Ratcliffe, 2nd Lieutenant
David McCallum	...	Steven Wyatt, Gunnery Officer
Ronald Lewis	...	Enoch Jenkins, maintopman
Lee Montague	...	Squeak, Mr. Claggart's assistant
Thomas Heathcote	...	Alan Payne, maintopman
Ray McAnally	...	William O'Daniel, maintopman
Robert Brown	...	Arnold Talbot, maintopman
John Meillon	...	Neil Kincaid, maintopman
Cyril Luckham	...	Hallam, Captain of Marines
Niall MacGinnis	...	Captain Nathaniel, Rights of Man
Victor Brooks	...	Amos Leonard, First Mate, Rights of Man

Runtime:

119 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Spain:7

Company:

Anglo Allied

Trivia:

Terence Stamp's film debut.

Quotes:

Master At Arms Claggert: We must serve the law, sir, or give up the right and privilege of service. It is only within that law that we may use our discretions according to our rank.
Captain Vere: You're so intelligent and so lucid for the rank you hold, Master At Arms.
Master At Arms Claggert: I thank you, sir.
Captain Vere: Yes, that's no flattery, Mr. Claggart. It's a melancholy fact. It's sad to see such qualities of mind bent to such a sorry purpose. What's the reason for it?
Master At Arms Claggert: I am what I am, sir. And what the world has made me.
Captain Vere: The world? The world demands that behind every peacemaker there be the gun, the gallows, the jail. Do you think it will always be so?
Master At Arms Claggert: I have no reason not to, sir.
Captain Vere: You live without hope?
Master At Arms Claggert: I live.
Captain Vere: But remember, Mr. Claggart, that even the man who wields the whip cannot defy the code we must obey and not be broken by it. That will be all.
[...]

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

an almost Biblical like morality play

Most people remember Herman Melville as the author of Moby Dick. Its hard to believe that when Melville's novel came out that most critics gave it negative reviews and it basically ended Melville's career. He spent most of the rest of his life working as a customs inspector on the New York city docks and was forgotten when he died. It was only after his death that his greatness was realized. Melville died in 1891, but Billy Budd wasn't published until 1924. A man named Raymond Weaver found the manuscript. I first read BB as a student in high school and I read it again in college. It is a wonderful book with symbolism and a message like the film Saving Silverman (with its message about the power of friedship). Billy Budd is a sort of Christ like figure (in the book Melville says that sailors took pieces of the scaffold where he was hanged as they would a fragment of the Cross). John Claggart is evil incarnate, some people have said his initials JC mean he is an anti-Christ. Captain Vere was forced to make a terrible decision to hang the beloved young sailor after he accidentally killed Claggart. Claggart knew that Billy had a speech impediment when he was scared and accused him of treason and Billy fatally struck him. I hated what they did to him, but it was sort of like reading about the Crucifixtion. I don't know what Herman Melville's religious beliefs were, but he wrote a tale like a Biblical morality play that I will always remember. Peter Ustinov is a real giant among actors. He is a director a writer and a true man of the world (he has won two Academy Awards for his acting). He did such a wonderful job directing this film, its a shame he never directed another. He is wonderful as the Conscience stricken Captain Vere. Terence Stamp was just getting started in films and gives a fine performance as Billy Budd. He does a wonderful job portraying Billy naiveness and goodness. Robert Ryan is also excellent as the evil and sinister Claggart. Ryan was excellent at playing bad guys like Colonel Breed in The Dirty Dozen, but he was never better here. Claggart is evil with a human face. I remember one scene where he orders a sailor savagely whipped and you see by his facial expression that he is almost sexually aroused at the site. You think to yourself how sick this man really is. He even wears black throughout the film. What is interesting to me reading Melville's book is that it was written a century before the term "serial killer" "psychopath" and "sociopath" were even coined and yet yet, there is a part of the book where he describes the fiendish Claggart and it is one of the best defintions of the sociopathic mind ever written! Melville really was a genius. There is a man named Harold Schechter who has written a number of books on famous serial killers and he quoted Melville's book in one of them. I wrote to him and he said that Melville was such a genius that it didn't suprise him that he was able to define what a sociopath and a diabolical mind was a century before FBI profilers did. In fact, his defintion could fit Lieutenant Loren Singer on JAG. She was a diabolical mind as well.