Two memorable Bogie roles had him play men sliding into paranoia and semi-insanity; Fred C. Dobbs in TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE and Captain Queeg in CAINE MUTINY. Which do you think was the better portrayal of a man sliding downward and why?
Good questions; not sure I can give adequate answers, but I'll give it a shot.
1. Better portrayal:
Gosh, that's a tough one--kinda like asking if I prefer rib-eye steak over T-bone when I love 'em both! So I'd have to say that Bogie nailed--IN SPADES!--all that was required of him in portraying both Fred C. Dobbs and Captain Queeg.
Not good enough for you? Okay, let us, for the sake of argument, assume that you are holding a gun to my head and I must, per your "kind word and a gun" suggestion, choose one over the other. Alright then: As Dobbs, Bogie outedges Bogie-as-Queeg.
2. Why:
A. Much more screen time is devoted to Dobbs in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (hereafter refered to as TTOTSM) than is alotted the hapless Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny" (TCM). Consequently, we get to know Dobbs quite a bit better and we actually like him just about as much as we DIS-like him. Fred didn't start out as such a bad sort but got overcome by the desert heat and his own fears, developing a deluded "do unto others before they do unto you" mindset. In the end, even his would-be murder victim, upon learning of Fred's death at the hands of the bandits, winds up feeling sorry for him. Fred wasn't such a bad guy, really, but he couldn't keep "the inner demons" at bay and ended up doing bad things that led to his own murder.
On the other hand, TCM only waits for the last couple minutes to explain, through Greenwald (the lawyer who got Maryk, Keefer and Willie acquited), any mitigating circumstances re: Queeg's bizarre, micro-managing behavior (Queeg's many traumatic battle experiences before he was sent by his superiors to become the new captain of THE CAINE). Neither do we, the viewers, really know as much as we should about Queeg's life and career prior to his taking command of THE CAINE; even with Greenwald's revelation of Queeg's troubled past, the latter remains ambiguous and difficult to ellicit the sympathy of the viewer and as a result it's harder for us to relate to Queeg than to poor Fred C. Dobbs; the latter of whom we might be able to say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."
These things about Queeg and Dobbs are not the fault of Humphrey Bogart but an actor's performance is only as good as the material and the support he is given by the screenwriter, director, co-stars and other colleagues; I think Bogie had much more support to boost his performance in TTOTSM than he was given in TCM and in the former I'd have to say it's a far meatier role because Bogie was given so much more to really flesh out his character.
TCM suffers from studio mogul Harry Cohn's insistence that the film must not exceed two hours in length. What had been on the minds of the several screenwriters who came and went during production, as well as director Edward Dmytryk himself, was that the movie just couldn't be as good as it should without at least another hour of screen time in which the viewer could become better acquainted with the characters. Though I've never read the source material (Herman Wouk's novel), I understand that character development was a major factor in the book's success. Therein lies the irony: Cut corners! says Cohn; but at the expense of the very thing that made Wouk's book "click" with enough readers to make it become a viable canditate for transition to film!
One other slight detail that makes Bogie-as-Queeg just a tad bit less credible than Bogie-as-Dobbs is his age in TCM. The book portrays Queeg as in his early thirties--perhaps even in his late twenties (his status as the new captain being the result of a battlefield promotion, in much the same way that Col. Custer achieved the temporary rank of General during the Civil War); Bogie was 54-55 years old and could easily have been the father of someone Queeg's own age. If they had thrown in a line that Queeg had served in WWI (though it would have been a departure from the book, as Queeg, therein, is still a very young man), it would have nipped in the bud those age issues re: casting Bogie as Queeg.
Everything I've said thus far, however, doesn't change the fact that Humphrey Bogart was superb as Captain Queeg and it seems very unlikely that any other actor could have rendered sufficient justice to the part. I'm sure that Bogie's prior work as Dobbs was THE factor in casting him as Queeg in the first place. No male actor, prior to TTOTSM, ever played as credibly a character's descent into violent paranoia. And no one working in Hollywood in the 1950's could play a shell-shocked, paranoid, micro-managing commanding officer with an inferiority complex better than Humphrey Bogart!
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Bogart was badly miscast as Queeg, he was far too OLD for the part.
shareHis decline in TCM was pretty electrifying and he did a great job. TOTSM is more subtle, but he did a great job. He was sick during TCM and that may have contributed to him looking like crap warmed over in the courtroom but maybe it was just good acting.
shareI didn't think Bogie was too old for Queeg (even if the book had him younger). He seemed perfect as the aging, has-been Queeg who probably was never more than mediocre, was unfit for command, and now was losing it.
I did think Bogie was too old to play Dobbs, as Dobbs had been in the Big Parade (World War I) and here perhaps ten years later was in his late 40's. Still, he did such a good job it worked.