The tale was left “finished” in manuscript when Melville died in 1891. But even in its “definitive” form, which was finally published in 1962, it’s hardly a finished Melville novel. It’s more of an excellent rough sketch for a great novel Melville might have, probably would have, written. Stanley Kauffmann, in his review of the Ustinov film, called it “the greatest scenario for a novel that I know.”(2)
Having just finished reading it – the version first published in England in 1924 – it does make one wish for more, rather as Fitzgerald’s tantalizingly unfinished The Last Tycoon does. That “more,” however, is not what either the opera or the film give to Melville’s tale. I won’t bother getting into the problems that various editors have had with the text, nor will I go near to the critical overkill to which it’s been subjected in the almost hundred years since it’s first appearance. Melville’s writing is sufficiently straightforward and transparent to allow for a wide range of interpretations. Clearly, Melville was drawn to the story because of its lyrical qualities, its engagement with hard and detailed facts that yet admit of a skyful of metaphors. Like the Pequod, the Indomitable, the ship on which the story is set, must first be allowed to sail of its own volition before it is turned into a symbol.
Billy Budd is a study of the antagonism and irreconcilability of good and evil. Billy, a “handsome sailor,” presented by Melville as a specimen of singular beauty among the pressed crew of a Royal Navy ship, comes into conflict with the ship’s master-at-arms, James Claggart for no other reason, Melville implies, than that his existence is a stark reminder to Claggart of everything he lacks and that he is preternaturally disposed to despise – his innocent good-naturedness reflected by his strikingly appealing appearance. Practically the instant he recognizes these qualities in Billy, Claggart begins to devise a way to destroy him. After failing to entrap him in a conspiracy among other pressed sailors to mutiny (at a moment in English history in which mutiny is an especially menacing word), Claggart boldly accuses Billy of sedition to the captain of the ship, Captain Vere, himself. Fond of Billy, as is everyone else on his ship, the captain suspects the accusation to be a lie, but must hear Billy defend himself and calls him to his cabin. There, faced with Claggart’s calumny, a tragic flaw of Billy’s – a stammer that grows worse when he is overcome with strong emotions – renders him incapable of defending himself through speech.(3) Standing opposite his accuser, struggling with his stammer to answer Claggart’s lie, Billy suddenly lashes out with his fist, catching Claggart square on his forehead, killing him. “The body fell over lengthwise, like a heavy plank tilted from erectness. A gasp or two, and he lay motionless.”
This is the point at which Captain Vere comes to the fateful – and ordinarily unwarranted – decision to conduct a “drumhead court” that will seal Billy’s fate before the Indomitable returns to the fleet. At the back of Vere’s mind, and the background of Melville’s tale, is the specter of mutiny, and it is in order to avoid it that Vere decides to establish Billy’s guilt for the death of Claggart and to expeditiously hang him. Doubtless, given the same facts, another tribunal could have arrived at such a verdict and executed Billy. But the effect of Vere’s decision, and its summary enaction, does circumvent whatever disturbance Claggart’s death and Billy’s captivity may have aroused in the ship’s crew. The circumstances of Billy’s hanging are related by Melville in one if the greatest scenes in literature. With a noose around his neck, Billy shouts “God bless Captain Vere!” and the crew murmur the same words back, just as Billy is hoisted to the top of the mast and the morning sun shines on him. Billy’s body is summarily wrapped in his canvas hammock, cannon shot is placed inside to weigh it down, and it is slipped over the side of the ship, with some men making somber note how the seabirds flew for some time over the spot where the body went down. The Indomitable rejoined the fleet without further incident, and in an engagement with a French ship, Captain Vere is mortally wounded, dying with the words “Billy Budd” on his lips.
In 1948 British composer Benjamin Britten suggested to E. M. Forster that he turn Billy Budd into a libretto for an opera he would compose. The four act version of Britten’s opera was performed in 1951. But Forster had made significant changes to the story that muddled the import of Melville’s tale. Forster was attracted to the project because he was convinced by clues in Melville’s texts that he was a “suppressed” homosexual. This interpretation has become more widespread than is justified. As James Fenton wrote, "[Melville] was a daring writer, yes, but he would not have thought of himself as daring in that particular direction."(4)
E. M. Forster, however, interpreted Claggart’s and Captain Vere’s behavior towards Billy Budd in terms of their suppressed homosexual passions. However this interpretation severely narrows the full import of Melville’s tale, it’s what Britten used as the framework for his opera. He would make a similar mistake twenty years later with Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, taking a cue from Luchino Visconti’s horrible film, and turning it into a tale of frustrated homoerotic passion, instead of a great artist’s final attempt to attain what for him had only been fleetingly attainable: an ideal of beauty represented in his imagination by a beautiful boy he meets at a Venice resort.
The opera of Billy Budd has at least the beauty of Britten’s music to distract one from Forster’s unfortunate libretto. With Peter Ustinov’s film there is no such distraction. It is, simply put, a maritime disaster. Though set aboard a ship, which would challenge even an experienced director to find solutions to the monotony of possible views of the action, Ustinov wastes the formidable talents of his cinematographer Robert Krasker with quite pedestrian set-ups. But his casting of the three principle roles would’ve impeded him anyway. Casting Terence Stamp as Billy was like the casting of Diane Kruger as Helen of Troy. He is a fine enough actor, but how could he possibly succeed in embodying Melville’s angelic “handsome sailor?” Claggart is played by a quite misplaced Robert Ryan, too old and too American. His menace toward Billy is clear enough, but reminded me too much of his many film noir heavies. But the most miscast role is Ustinov himself as Captain Vere. The most crucial scene in the book is the confrontation between Billy and Claggart in Captain Vere’s cabin. Ustinov’s poor direction has Billy knock Claggart down with two joined fists, which would’ve been slow, clumsy and probably ineffective in killing Claggart. Ustinov shows him falling down and hitting his head against a jutting wooden block, which is presumably what kills him. But not before Claggart opens his eyes and grins at Billy, knowing that he, to, is finished. In the tale, as I have described, Billy, who is taller than Claggart, kills him with one punch to his temple.
In the scene of Billy’s hanging, Ustinov couldn’t show us the actual hanging, but instead shows Billy’s shoes dropping neatly together to the deck below where he is hoisted to his death. This suggests something that Melville doesn’t show: that hanging Billy caused him to convulse enough to throw off his shoes. It isn’t even subtle in the film. And the only thing in the film that stops the crew from mutiny upon Billy’s execution is the appearance of an enemy ship, which impels the men to their battle stations. It is a muddled conclusion to a mishandled adaptation of Melville’s tale which, while seemingly spare, possesses implications that are cosmic in scope.
(1) I didn’t read Moby Dick until I was 43. And I’m glad that I waited.
(2) A World on Film: Criticism and Comment (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).
(3) “In this particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch interferer, the envious marplot of Eden, still has more or less to do with every human consignment to this planet of earth. In every case, one way or another he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind us — I too have a hand here.”
(4) "The Sadist and the Stutterer," The Guardian, 2 December 2005.
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