Morituri

How can a movie about a blackmailed German officer playing a cat-and-mouse game of brains and sabotage with a German merchant ship be so unbelievably dull? Yul Brynner does a fine job with his portrayal of the ship captain, who doesn’t appear to care much either way with the war but loves the sea and wants to fulfill his duty. But Marlon Brando frequently seems alternately tortured and a little bit bored by the entire thing. In interviews at the time Brando mentioned doing the film purely for money, and it shows. Much like Bette Davis, Brando would invent business or display an inability to hide his disdain for material he didn’t love with theatrical tics. Here, Brando stares out into the world with blank eyes, pausing and stuttering over dialog, crafting a performance that is like a caricature of Brando pointing the ways towards his more indulgent choices in later films.

One sordid episode after another plays out, I suppose to try and sustain mystery and suspense over whether or not Brando will remove the charges from the ship in the event that this ship’s cargo, rubber a commodity in short supply, gets discovered by the Allies. The general overview of the plot sounds interesting enough, but an unnecessary bit with a stowaway girl from a concentration camp who might blow the entire operation bogs the thing down. In fact, numerous diversions from the main story don’t heighten the tension but merely distract from it and made me believe that the writer(s) didn’t have enough ideas or confidence in the main action to fully expand it. But Morituri does have one large positive in its corner: the cinematography is top-notch. Moody and evocative, creating a tense, atmospheric tone that deserved a better film, the one lurking undercover in moments of Brando’s performance, in all of Brynner’s and in the basic premise. The parts were there, but the bloated running time and too many needless distractions hinder the enterprise.