Critical notices for The Caine Mutiny were mixed, but audiences flocked to the film, making it the second-highest grossing picture of the year; White Christmas (1954) was number one.

Time wrote that The Caine Mutiny was "a little cold and loud where it needs the flare and hiss of honest anger." But the reviewer was quite taken with Humphrey Bogart's performance. "(He) brings the hollow, driven, tyrannical character of Captain Queeg to full and invidious life, yet seldom fails to maintain a bond of sympathy with his audience. He deliberately gives Queeg the mannerisms and appearances of an officer of sternness and decision, and then gradually discloses him as a man who is bottling up a scream..."

French critic turned director Francois Truffaut liked The Caine Mutiny because it showed Humphrey Bogart's "fascinating face in its best light. In the role of an officer who was as tough as leather, Bogy appeared as he really was, because the actors didn't wear any makeup in the old Technicolor films. For the first time we saw the scar on his upper lip that was left from a time long ago when he was in the navy and a piece of wood cut him when he broke a bottle on the bridge." (From The Films in My Life by Francois Truffaut).

The New Yorker review was lukewarm: "As pictures about the United States Navy go, The Caine Mutiny isn't bad."

Commonweal suggested that "perhaps (Herman) Wouk's sprawling novel was almost too hard to film - especially if the finished product had to please everybody, including the United States Navy."

Danny Peary, author of Cult Movies and Guide for the Film Fanatic, wrote: "The direction by Edward Dmytryk is stagy - one never feels that the men are actually on a ship in mid-ocean. The most memorable scene has Bogart's Queeg, with metal balls in his hand, falling apart while undergoing interrogation by Jose Ferrer. Queeg was by no means a typical Bogart character, but this role and that of Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre best reveal the vulnerability beneath the tough exterior that distinguishes Bogart's screen persona."

AWARDS & HONORS:

The Caine Mutiny earned a handful of Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Humphrey Bogart), Best Supporting Actor (Tom Tully), Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Score, and Best Sound. Unfortunately, the multi-nominated film went home empty handed because it had the bad luck to be released in the same year as On the Waterfront (1954), which won eight Oscars that year.

Compiled by Scott McGee