Damn the Defiant (1962)
(HMS Defiant)
Country: GB
Technical: Technicolor/Cinemascope 101m
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Anthony Quayle, Tom Bell, Nigel Stock, Murray Melvin, Victor Maddern, Maurice Denham
Synopsis:
During the Napoleonic wars a ship of the line receives orders to escort a convoy of timber back from the Adriatic, but there are mutinous elements in the crew, or rather pseudo-revolutionaries, and the captain is at odds with his sadistic, silver-spooned lieutenant.
Review:
Surely timed to coincide with the other Lewis's Mutiny on the Bounty, Gilbert's film puts a different spin on the insubordinacy: this time it is the captain who must rein in the over-zealous lashings of his junior officer, who in turn uses the former's son as a pawn in the power game. There is the usual ration of nautical ingredients: unjust punishment, maggots in food, courage under fire, the staunch seamen and the bad apple, but what distinguishes this otherwise perfunctory, though watchable, entertainment (certainly not the model work) is the concern for reform within the navy which the good captain signals from the fireside conversation of the opening scene and which is resolved by the somewhat curious royal pardon of the mutiny of the fleet at the end. In a metacinematic sense it is also notable for its deliberate casting against type, with Quayle the least comfortable as a worthy mutineer. At least there are no women aboard.
(HMS Defiant)
Country: GB
Technical: Technicolor/Cinemascope 101m
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Anthony Quayle, Tom Bell, Nigel Stock, Murray Melvin, Victor Maddern, Maurice Denham
Synopsis:
During the Napoleonic wars a ship of the line receives orders to escort a convoy of timber back from the Adriatic, but there are mutinous elements in the crew, or rather pseudo-revolutionaries, and the captain is at odds with his sadistic, silver-spooned lieutenant.
Review:
Surely timed to coincide with the other Lewis's Mutiny on the Bounty, Gilbert's film puts a different spin on the insubordinacy: this time it is the captain who must rein in the over-zealous lashings of his junior officer, who in turn uses the former's son as a pawn in the power game. There is the usual ration of nautical ingredients: unjust punishment, maggots in food, courage under fire, the staunch seamen and the bad apple, but what distinguishes this otherwise perfunctory, though watchable, entertainment (certainly not the model work) is the concern for reform within the navy which the good captain signals from the fireside conversation of the opening scene and which is resolved by the somewhat curious royal pardon of the mutiny of the fleet at the end. In a metacinematic sense it is also notable for its deliberate casting against type, with Quayle the least comfortable as a worthy mutineer. At least there are no women aboard.
(HMS Defiant)
Country: GB
Technical: Technicolor/Cinemascope 101m
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Anthony Quayle, Tom Bell, Nigel Stock, Murray Melvin, Victor Maddern, Maurice Denham
Synopsis:
During the Napoleonic wars a ship of the line receives orders to escort a convoy of timber back from the Adriatic, but there are mutinous elements in the crew, or rather pseudo-revolutionaries, and the captain is at odds with his sadistic, silver-spooned lieutenant.
Review:
Surely timed to coincide with the other Lewis's Mutiny on the Bounty, Gilbert's film puts a different spin on the insubordinacy: this time it is the captain who must rein in the over-zealous lashings of his junior officer, who in turn uses the former's son as a pawn in the power game. There is the usual ration of nautical ingredients: unjust punishment, maggots in food, courage under fire, the staunch seamen and the bad apple, but what distinguishes this otherwise perfunctory, though watchable, entertainment (certainly not the model work) is the concern for reform within the navy which the good captain signals from the fireside conversation of the opening scene and which is resolved by the somewhat curious royal pardon of the mutiny of the fleet at the end. In a metacinematic sense it is also notable for its deliberate casting against type, with Quayle the least comfortable as a worthy mutineer. At least there are no women aboard.