Good movie but grossly overrated

Absolutely Fantastic

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

A complex, deeply multi-layered and allusive story about death, which does not give up its meanings easily. Melvillian. Also extremely painful. Several characters die. Claggart reminds me of people I have known, of inexplicable self-hating personality. What does he really want ? Although he constantly lies, in some sense he is consistently true to himself, and his Satanic needs. It's been noticed that Billy's innocence makes him a Christ-like figure. Captain Vere's name suggests a form of truth, but it also means to "veer": in other words to change direction, to depart from the straight and narrow. The Rights of Man are painfully ironic, when reflecting on the slaves and native Americans, as well as the articles of war. Johnson pointed that out. Very well acted and directed. Not necessary to say who by. Hope this hasn't spoiled anything. Budd wasn't on an American merchantman when pressed.

I first saw this film at age 18, and was not ready for the language and psychological underpinnings of the story, but a great story it is. Classic in the sense of a story for all time and and riveting in its humanity. No film captures better the physical conditions of the way sailors lived in the British navy of the Napoleonic Wars. The claustrophobia, the constant movement of the ship over the deep "full of monsters surviving because of the sharpest teeth" as the Master of Arms John Claggert notes. Claggert is memorably played by Robert Ryan, perhaps one of Hollywood's most under-sung actors. His Claggert is a man who seems to be devouring himself with acidic self-hatred. What the world has made him is the doom of Billy Budd, the newly impressed seaman who is the very persona of guileless innocence. These two are headed for tragedy and how they get there is the basis of the film. Very fine actors all around such as John Neville, Paul Rogers, and a young David McCallum lend credence to a shattering conclusion that I found still quite moving in a recent viewing on TCM. Peter Ustinov who directed and wrote the screenplay and plays the Captain was equal to the task in all those roles. One of my favorite top- ten movies of the sea with a story that will never grow old. Neither will Herman Melville's novel.

"When is justice compatible with speed?"Asked of the Captain in the aftermath of Claggart's death, this is one of the transcendent questions of the story - and one of any legal system.From the compact novel of the same name by Herman Melville, this adaptation by co-star Peter Ustinov - who also directed - is a marvel.Production value is excellent throughout, in particular, cinematography and set direction.The performances are completely idiomatic and uniformly superb. Special mention go to Terence Stamp, of course, as Billy Budd, who emotes genuine innocence and perfect trust - and Robert Ryan, who is thoroughly despicable as the sadistic Claggart, the lone vestige of humanity that flickers once through his tortured soul brilliantly executed. Melvyn Douglas wears the tragedy and weariness of the world on his face with a tear-stained countenance, and speaks it movingly with eloquence."We do not deal with justice, but with law," says the Captain, and Billy's fate is sealed. After the sentence is carried out, he laments in anguish, "I am not fit to do the work of God... or the Devil." But, then, who amongst us is?

"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.