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...Billy Budd. Herman Melville's didactic tale has been transformed into a vivid, frightening, deeply affecting film, and for this the credit belongs principally to Britain's Peter Ustinov, who directed the picture, helped write the script, and plays one of the leading roles...
...Billy Budd. Herman Melville's didactic tale has been transformed into a vivid, frightening, deeply affecting film, and for this the credit belongs principally to Britain's Peter Ustinov, who directed the picture, helped write the script, and plays one of the leading roles...
Falsely, Claggart accuses the sailor of plotting mutiny. Vere knows that Claggart is lying and, seeing a chance to trap him, he sends for Billy Budd to deny the charge. Billy, facing Claggart in Vere's cabin, struggles to speak, but can only make the terrible sounds of stammering. Suddenly, he gives action to his horror with a lunging, double-fisted blow that sends Claggart to the deck, dead with a broken skull...
Vere's only course, under the Articles of War, is to court-martial Billy Budd for killing a superior officer. And the only penalty prescribed by the articles is death. "We don't deal with justice here, but with the law," Vere finally persuades a member of the drumhead court. And the court knows of no way to save Billy Budd, makes the soul-wrenching decision that he must hang. Next morning, as the rope tightens around his neck, Billy cries in a clear voice: "God bless Captain Vere...
...film's Billy Budd is Terence Stamp, 23, son of a Thames tugboat man. His Michelangelic good looks and country-boy smile make Billy's unaffected virtue believable where a better-known actor might have failed. As Captain Vere, Peter Ustinov shuns mawkishness in his role of naval Pilate; he reveals Vere's humanity subtly, and when Billy's wonderful and cruel farewell rings out, Vere stands destroyed by what he has had to do. Robert Ryan is the terrible Mister Claggart who presides so zealously at floggings: once, after counting out ten lashes while...