Billy Budd

Billy Budd is one of Britten's best operas, it has a very moving story and some of the most beautiful music of any of Britten's operas(especially Captain Vere's epilogue). While the ENO and fairly recent Glyndebourne productions are very impressive(the 1997/8 Met production is not on DVD but that has many good things too), this is the best of DVD competition.

The problem with well-worn historical themes like the eighteenth-century British navy is how to clean the past of the clichés that now barnacle it... Here we have just the usual costume stuff.

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.

I've never read "Billy Budd". The only one of Herman Melville's novels that I've read is "Moby Dick".

Superb sea drama with some of the best acting performances ever put on film. The enactment of Melville's melancholy novel is pitch perfect and represents Hollywood at its dazzling best.

Among the group of Hollywood notables who have acted, directed, produced, written, some of the above, all of the above - much less done all in the same movie - this has got to be right near the top of the list.

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).

Billy Budd is directed by Peter Ustinov, who also stars, writes and produces. It's adapted from the stage play that in turn was adapted from the Herman Melville story of the same name.

Terrance Stamp plays Billy, the innocent seaman who runs afoul of Claggert, played by Robert Ryan. This is about power and the rule of the sea and the idea of honor.