Billy Budd's Jubilee
On September 20, 1962, Peter Ustinov's film "Billy Budd", based on the story of the same name by Herman Melville, was released in cinemas in the UK.
The backstory of this film is very interesting. From a young age, the fate of Herman Melville, born in 1819, was connected with the sea. At the age of 18 he began to serve as a cabin boy on a mail ship, at 22 he went to the southern seas as a sailor on a whaling ship. Because of a conflict with the boatswain, he escaped from the ship and was captured by the natives in the Marquesas Islands. He was rescued by the crew of an American warship and upon his return to the United States, after three years of wandering, he decided to take up literary work.
Herman Melville's first novels, published in 1846-1847, were met with great enthusiasm by the reading public. However, then Melville's popularity as a writer began to decline. Even his novel "Mobie Dick", published in 1851, so beloved by many today and awarded several adaptations, did not make much of an impression on his contemporaries. Melville even tried to publish under pseudonyms and generally change the type of literary activity from prose to poetry, but all these attempts to regain the initial popularity, and at the same time, financial viability, were unsuccessful. And then, in 1860, he again returned to the sea. But not for long.
Herman Melville was going to make a trip around the world with his brother, but it was only possible, starting from California, around Cape Horn and reaching New York. Several of his works, written after the sea voyage, were released in minimal editions, and even those remained unsold. And then, in 1866, Melville radically changed his occupation, having entered the service of a clerk of the New York Customs. For 19 years, until his retirement in 1885, Herman Melville served in the customs office, earning a reputation as an honest and incorruptible official, perhaps the only one in what is reputed to be the most corrupt institution. While working in customs, Melville continued to write poetry. However, all of them remained either rejected by publishers or settled unsold on the shelves of bookstores. Melville died in 1891, completely forgotten by his contemporaries.
But a few decades later, in the late 10s and early 20s of the 20th century, reader interest in the works of Herman Melville began to awaken. This revival of interest in the writer's works prompted Columbia University professor Raymond Weaver to study Melville's work and biography. To this end, he turned to the writer's granddaughter with a request to allow him access to his grandfather's archives. The granddaughter didn't mind. Rummaging through these archives, Weaver, to his surprise, discovered the manuscript of a completely unknown story entitled "Billy Budd". The story was unfinished, but, nevertheless, it was a completely holistic work. After doing some rather cursory editing of the manuscript, Weaver published the story in 1924 under the title "Billy Budd, Foretopman". The novella received rave reviews from America's most respected literary critics, with German writer Thomas Mann declaring that "Billy Budd" was "one of the most beautiful stories in the world" and that it "opened his heart."
By the beginning of the 40s of the 20th century, the story of Herman Melville "Billy Budd" was translated into several foreign languages, in particular, into Italian, thanks to which the famous Italian poet and translator, Nobel Prize winner in literature, Salvatore Quasimodo wrote on its basis the libretto of the opera, and the Italian composer Giorgio Ghedini wrote the opera, which premiered on stage in 1949. Ghedini's opera was not particularly successful, but prompted the British writer Edward Forster, together with the British librettist Eric Crozier, to create their own version of the libretto based on the story by Herman Melville. A friend of Forster and Crozier, one of the greatest British composers of the 20th century, Benjamin Britten wrote an opera in 4 acts based on the libretto, which was successfully premiered at the Theater Royal, Covent Garden in London on December 1, 1951. Subsequently, Britten's opera was staged in many opera houses around the world, in particular, in 2013 at the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg, and in 2016 at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
Around the same time, the American playwrights Louis O. Cox and Robert H. Chapman wrote a play based on the novel by Herman Melville, which was originally called "Uniform of Flesh". Performances based on this play were successfully staged in small theaters off-Broadway starting in 1949. Then Cox and Chapman created a new version of the play, especially for the major theaters of Broadway, where performances of "Billy Budd" had been a great success since 1951. This version of the play won several American theater awards. In 1952, the play was adapted for the anthology television series Schlitz Playhouse of Stars.
In 1956, filmmakers became interested in the play "Billy Budd". Independent producer Frank Gilbert acquired the film rights and assigned DeWitt Bodin to write the script. Later, the film rights changed hands several times and eventually became the property of the famous British actor and director Peter Ustinov (those who watched Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus" know him by his role as Lentullus Batiatus). Based on the script by DeWitt Bodin, Ustinov, together with Robert Rossen (known as the director of the film "The Hustler"), created the final version of the script, which formed the basis of the film.
Peter Ustinov's film was rated quite highly by film critics, although without 100% enthusiasm. Even the picky Bosley Crowther noted in his review "beautiful black-and-white production supervised by Peter Ustinov... roundly and handsomely performance of all-male participants". A common place in the reviews of film critics was a remark about the too "fabulous" image of the title character performed by debutant Terence Stamp. True, Crowther pointed out that "Terence Stamp, a new English actor with a sinewy, boyish frame and the face of a Botticelli angel, is perfect as Billy Budd, the innocent, trusting sailor who cannot comprehend wickedness."
It was Terence Stamp who, in 1963, brought the film the only film award earned by the picture - the Golden Globe - in the nomination of the Most Promising Newcomer - Male. In the same year, Peter Ustinov's film "Billy Budd" received the only Oscar nomination, and again it was Terence Stamp, but for some reason the American Film Academy classified him in the category of Supporting Actor. But even in this category, she did not award picture own award. At home, in the UK, Peter Ustinov's film received 5 BAFTA nominations from the British Film Academy. However, in almost all of the nominations received by Ustinov's film, the preference of British film academics was given to David Lean's masterpiece "Lawrence of Arabia".
In the Soviet Union, Peter Ustinov's film "Billy Budd" was not shown, at least until the start of perestroika. And this is surprising, since in some fragments the film echoes Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece for all time "Battleship Potemkin".
Modern moviegoers, despite the fact that several decades have passed since the release of the film, rate the film quite highly. 65% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Peter Ustinov's film "Billy Budd" according to FilmGourmand version was 7,898, which allowed it to enter the Golden Thousand and take 875th Rank.
