Sabah Hensley
This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
Portia Hilton
Blistering performances.
Freeman
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
calvinnme
I feel sorry for this film, because - although you could quibble on specifics - it's basically Mutiny on the Bounty without the innocent islander interlude. And it came out in 1962, the same year that the big budget overblown and just awful MGM remake came out because MGM was in its death throes, out of ideas, and had taken to recycling Irving Thalberg material from the 20's and 30's since the 1940s. If they could have gotten a voodoo priestess to get Irving Thalberg to rise from his grave at this point, MGM would have done just that. But it was Bounty that probably dominated the public interest because it was MGM and Budd was just a little old Allied Artists product. But I digress.Budd (Terence Stamp) is literally the fair haired boy of a British ship in 1797. So, after just having their collective butts kicked out of the now United States, I imagine the British navy in 1797 felt much like the MGM I just described. Although pressed into service - that is shanghaied for all you landlubbers out there - and although he is under the discipline of a depraved and sadistic Master-at-Arms John Claggart (Robert Ryan), Budd has an unbridled optimism and selflessness about him which just annoys Claggart even more. Unlike "Mutiny on the Bounty", the captain (Peter Ustinov) seems a fair and honest man. However, given past mutinies on his ship prior to his command, he probably gives Claggart more leeway than he deserves. Plus the captain feels he must hold to strict naval discipline or risk another mutiny. Also, when emotionally overwrought, Budd is given to stammering, making him unable to verbally defend himself at times. All of these facts come together for a tragic ending that gives the captain the very mutiny that his steadfast adherence to naval law had been employed to prevent. But then along come the French... So what happens? Watch and find out.A little factoid I got on the Turner Classic Movies presentation of this film last night. Ryan was deliberately unfriendly to Stamp during filming so that their antagonism would be more realistic. He knew that Stamp was new to film acting and didn't want any real friendliness to leak through into their performances.Terence Stamp's performance will seem all the more remarkable when you realize that 19 years later he is Superman's arch enemy in Superman II and looks and acts every bit as ruthless as he looks and acts angelic and innocent here. Recommended, just have patience with the pacing, because it could have used some work, particularly towards the end.
wes-connors
In 1797, while waging a seafaring war with France, English sailor Terence Stamp (as William "Billy" Budd) is recruited from a merchant ship called "Rights of Man" to serve on the battleship "Avenger" by order of steadfast Captain Peter Ustinov (as Edwin Fairfax Vere). The young, handsome, and fair-haired Mr. Stamp becomes equally popular with his new crew-mates. Full of innocence and good nature, Stamp wins the approval of everyone except sadistic "Master d'Arms" Robert Ryan (as John Claggart). The antithesis of Stamp, Mr. Ryan derives orgasmic pleasure from flogging his men. Stamp wants to win Ryan's soul from the dark side, but the cause is hopeless… This is Herman Melville's classic "Billy Budd" in the hands of Mr. Ustinov, an actor who should have been asked to direct more films. The project is a near-masterpiece, with Ustinov also credited as producer and co-writer. The film is true to the heart of Melville's story, with Ustinov arguably overplaying his hand only in his own characterization; his "Vere" is a "devil's advocate" who completely ignores Ryan's crimes and Stamp's defense. But, this remains a great allegorical story of good and evil. "Found in a silk-lined basket," the Biblical "Billy Budd" is faithful.Unfortunately, this ship was launched after MGM's Marlon Brando re-make of "Mutiny on the Bounty" had sucked all the water out of the ocean. Even so, Ustinov's film was recognized as the superior work. He received a "Best Director" nomination from "Film Daily" and the film showed up on 1962's "Best Picture" lists. In an unusually strong year, the "National Board" had it finish at #2.In only his second feature, Stamp made an impression that was hard to ignore, winning the "Film Daily" award in the "Supporting Actor" category and a "Golden Globe" in their newcomer category. Inarguably the star of "Billy Budd", Stamp also received his one and only (as of this writing) "Academy Award" nomination - but in the "Supporting" category. None of this helped Ryan, the film's un-nominated best supporting actor. Make sure you have your remote control ready to rewind after about an hour of running time - you may want to re-play the pivotal moonlight scene wherein Ustinov directs Stamp to make his final attempt at charming the pants off Ryan; this confrontation is truly amazing.********* Billy Budd (11/12/62) Peter Ustinov ~ Terence Stamp, Robert Ryan, Peter Ustinov, Melvyn Douglas
T Y
As far as I can tell, whatever themes are professed to be inside any and all nineteenth century seafaring adventures, they're really just about styles of leadership. The nautical adventure always devovles into some nasty, neurotic hardass envying some younger more attractive, more mild and likable sailor and a battle of wills follow (See Master & Commander, Mutiny on the Bounty, Moby Dick, Mr Roberts). Some authority figure always turns out to be a sadist. Ahab, Bligh (and more generally in nineteenth century fiction; Soubeyran, Squeers, Javert) and here Claggert (played by Robert Ryan). Their villainy is signified by their sneering smiles, their craggy faces, their peg-legs, and their bottomless cruelty. Audiences then mentally substitute previous bosses, bad parents, the jerk cop who pulled you over last weekend as the nasty abuser. The merits are rather slight.The argument, that no one seems able to come up with, for not hanging Billy is that the brass will lose the faith of the crew. The point is made by the films own obvious and acceptable dramatic conclusion (which is followed by a cheap bait and switch distraction).
carvalheiro
"Billy Budd" (1962) directed by Peter Ustinov was a great surprise of the time, concerning what happened to a young and quite mute sailor when he was supposed to be the mate who wants to kill the commander. There is a trial and Billy Budd was condemned to death without chance and immediately. The cruelty of the implication in a kind of minor unrest and the ability in how he was indicted as criminal, by the way of judging a free thinker and not at all a violent individual, also it shows us how it's easy to put in jail someone with a fake accusation because of his behavior and insolence. Peter Ustinov and Terence Stamp both were for the very good exploit of direction and main character, thinking surely in a young audience of teenagers mainly for the purpose of the story written by Melville long time ago. The scene of the rope on the deck of the ship sailing the sea as though without enough wind running slowly under a calm weather and during the moment before the execution of the damned sailor, not acquitted on contrary of what was provable, is performed with such a good emotion that some weeping low of contained rage with this extreme measure of the sentence against a civilized young man, whom the death penalty is like grace for his own calm torment, before this almost unrealistic ceremony of fake secret unrest for all that whom observes it. But without against such a strength to prevent it as so pathetic is his character of a sacrificed for abuse from the law and the interpretation wrongly made by the maritime trial there far away of the shores. Another strength of this movie it was the character of the chief in arms performed by Robert Ryan in the role of an heinous sailor that put Billy in a state of permanent suspecting. By this way in that story is killed by this last one, which provokes the trial and the intervention of the commander for this execution. As well raising in surplus a problem of discipline in a vessel, whose crew was partly constituted by young civilians as recruits on the spot in 1797, during the state of war on Mediterrean sea between England and France.
