Synopsis
The men! The mutiny! The might of the greatest adventure classic of the high seas!
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.
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.
Die Verdammten der Meere, La fragata infernal, Били Бъд, Билли Бад, O Vingador dos Mares, 战海风云, بیلی باد, Μπίλυ Μπαντ, Fragata infernal, 빌리 버드
"This isn't about justice, it's about law."
"Wasn't the one made to serve the other?"
Similar to Paths of Glory in that officers feel they must uphold some rigid form of law and order rather than do the right thing.
The British Navy had wartime rights to stop British merchant ships and take anyone they wanted and press them into service on the Navy vessel. A horrible law, at least with the draft, you have some time to adapt to the idea and say goodbye. So the Navy takes Billy Budd off a ship called Rights of Man and he turns out to be a very good sailor, and a very kind and honest man who makes friends quickly. Too…
Sailing the high seas again with another nautical film from 1962, this time Peter Ustinov's Billy Budd. For a sailing story, it's maybe too light on adventure and action for my liking, but it's very compelling all the same.
Robert Ryan - wow. He gives a brutally intense performance, playing a character who always looks as if a storm is raging within his black heart. I mentioned in my review of Damn the Defiant! how Dirk Bogarde plays a "sadistic" officer who gets off on seeing men flogged and Ryan's character is similarly sadistic, except with Ryan we develop an understanding of his harsh worldview and savage pleasures. Like Billy, he's a man who has been forced to serve in…
Films I Watched On TV While I Was 'Working'
There's a scene in Billy Budd, the best scene in my opinion, where Terence Stamp and Robert Ryan have a little chat on deck and for some reason it reminded me of the 'FUCKING FUNNY' scene in Goodfellas.
Not so much in its content but more in terms of the very different positions the two characters are coming from. In this case, Ryan isn't joking like Joe Pesci was, but there's an intensity to it coming from the fact that Stamp really doesn't understand where Ryan is coming from with his aggression. It's one of the most powerful and stress-inducing scenes I've watched for ages.
I didn't know a great deal…
Come for a bunch of guys yelling on a boat, stay for the philosophical debates, Christ-like imagery, and the fact that every single thing in this movie is a metaphor.
Psychological warfare on the high seas. The most vindicate of Robert Ryan's gallery of inhumanely depraved savages, his bullying master-of-arms a man who delights in the corporal punishment of the crew under him, and whose unconcealed glee of being lost to the crack of the whip, turns to a grimace whenever his rhapsody is interrupted by the number of prescribed lashes being reached.
Ryan's malicious John Claggart suddenly finds himself tormented by the serenity, divinity and moral purity of the ship's newest member (Terrence Stamp in an astonishing screen debut that would rocket him away on a wild ride through the '60s, working with some of the world's most renowned filmmakers), setting out to destroy that inner calm and peace…
Peter Ustinov's Billy Budd seems built for after-movie discussion more than in-the-moment entertainment. It's a war story--except the war here is all but hypothetical. This is war as field of ethical decision instead of active battle.
The source is a Herman Melville story. I'm not familiar with it, but in Ustinov's telling it involves an angelic visitation to a British Navy vessel during a war with France in the 1790s. He's not a literal angel, but young Billy Budd (Terence Stamp) is so pure and good he might as well drift in on a cloud. Even when the sadistic boss Claggart (Robert Ryan) provokes him, Billy maintains his cheery optimism.
This sort of innocent-in-the-world can be grating. Someone this untroubled…
There was an all too rare screening on TV earlier this week of this 1962 film that marked Terence Stamp's cinematic debut, of which I'd heard many a thing about it over the years but had never actually seen it. Reading Steve G's review this morning convinced me to check it out for myself.
It's funny that Steve's review discusses one key scene between Stamp's eponymous Budd and John Claggart, the sadistic Master at Arms, played by Robert Ryan, and how it put him in mind of another film; Goodfellas. It's funny because I too kept thinking of another film whilst watching Billy Budd, and that film was Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. Like David Bowie's POW in that film, Stamp's…
This cast, this CAST, this….I need a moment…
This cast is so goddamn good, I can’t handle it. Ryan’s nihilistic dark soul decking out cruelty with a smile. Ustinov's milquetoast authority and blinkered intelligence. Stamp effortlessly and quietly executing likeability and kindness. Douglas aging gracefully from debonair urbanity to grizzled elder…I could go on.
The ship looks great. The set pieces, both conversational and violent, are stunning. The performances, well, I already said enough. The script (and the play it’s based on) injects verve and suspense into a novella that took me months to struggle through.... The film loses its way in the last 30 seconds, but everything before? Yowza.
Viewed with Billy Budd (1966) and Beau Travail.
🌐 The Men from U.N.C.L.E., Ranked
📚 Read the Book and Saw the Movie
🥊 Robert Ryan, Ranked
“Esto no se trata de justicia, se trata de la ley". "¿No se hizo una para servir a la otra?”
The 1960s, Pt. II: 100/100
1962 Ranked
Jesus Christ (Terence Stamp) is conscripted to serve on the HMS Avenger under Captain Pontius Pilate (Peter Ustinov). As one might expect, Satan (Robert Ryan), the master-at-arms, hates Jesus’ innate goodness, grace, and capacity for empathy and forgiveness, trying to constantly have him written up on report and draw the ire of Pontius Pilate. He even goes so far as to try to tempt Jesus into mutiny, sending one of his demons, Squeak (Lee Montague), out to try to ensnare Jesus into a plot against the ship’s leadership to use it to have him hanged. When all else fails, Satan is more than willing to tempt Jesus into striking him down, as long…
After a good-hearted sailor unintentionally murders the master-at-arms, his superiors are forced to choose whether to hang him or let him go, in Peter Ustinov’s British historical adventure.
Based on Louis O. Coxe’s stage play version of Herman Melville’s short book of the same name, which occurred 13 years earlier – with the novel being published in 1891 – the story concerns a ship's captain who is forced to choose the destiny of a blameless young sailor, who is suspected of killing the ship’s master-at-arms.
Terence Stamp gives a very good performance in his role as the title character, the young sailor who is suspected of doing something awful, while Robert Ryan is respectable as the master-at-arms who isn’t a…