What a wonderful movie! I can't believe it's taken me this long to get around to seeing it.
In a bit of convenient coincidence, I happened to be reading "The Caine Mutiny" at the same time that I saw "Mister Roberts," and the two stories are kissing cousins. Both concern the tyrannical captain of a largely obsolete ship in the late days of WWII and the second-in-command officers who try to bring some humanity to the lives of the sailors suffering under the strict leadership. In "Mister Roberts," that captain is James Cagney, and the executive officer is Henry Fonda (Mr. Roberts), beleaguered by the notion that he's missing out on the important parts of the war, and that his time aboard a supplies ship stationed in the safe zone of the South Pacific is wasted. The point of the movie, though, is that the world is full of all kinds of heroes, and combat heroes are only one type. There's a valid heroism to be found in simply being reliable and decent, and the kind of person that knows how to be a good leader. It's less glamorous, but no less important or necessary. One of the points that I liked best about the film was the acknowledgement that the hero's job can be a quite thankless one. Mister Roberts is a hero to his men, but they don't necessarily know it -- they easily turn on him when things don't go exactly their way. Anyone who's ever supervised a group of individuals in any context should be able to appreciate the same feeling.
Fonda is wonderful in his role, and he's backed by a tremendous cast. Cagney, Jack Lemmon and William Powell fill out the other major roles, and this is one of those instances where an entire cast just clicks -- the chemistry between all of them is palpable.
The film gets a bit maudlin and treacly towards its conclusion, and it tries to race through too much plot in its last moments, but I forgive it these flaws, since it did come out at a time when there would still have been an intense nostalgia for and a great deal of sentimentality surrounding WWII stories like this one.
Grade: A
In a bit of convenient coincidence, I happened to be reading "The Caine Mutiny" at the same time that I saw "Mister Roberts," and the two stories are kissing cousins. Both concern the tyrannical captain of a largely obsolete ship in the late days of WWII and the second-in-command officers who try to bring some humanity to the lives of the sailors suffering under the strict leadership. In "Mister Roberts," that captain is James Cagney, and the executive officer is Henry Fonda (Mr. Roberts), beleaguered by the notion that he's missing out on the important parts of the war, and that his time aboard a supplies ship stationed in the safe zone of the South Pacific is wasted. The point of the movie, though, is that the world is full of all kinds of heroes, and combat heroes are only one type. There's a valid heroism to be found in simply being reliable and decent, and the kind of person that knows how to be a good leader. It's less glamorous, but no less important or necessary. One of the points that I liked best about the film was the acknowledgement that the hero's job can be a quite thankless one. Mister Roberts is a hero to his men, but they don't necessarily know it -- they easily turn on him when things don't go exactly their way. Anyone who's ever supervised a group of individuals in any context should be able to appreciate the same feeling.
Fonda is wonderful in his role, and he's backed by a tremendous cast. Cagney, Jack Lemmon and William Powell fill out the other major roles, and this is one of those instances where an entire cast just clicks -- the chemistry between all of them is palpable.
The film gets a bit maudlin and treacly towards its conclusion, and it tries to race through too much plot in its last moments, but I forgive it these flaws, since it did come out at a time when there would still have been an intense nostalgia for and a great deal of sentimentality surrounding WWII stories like this one.
Grade: A