Innocence on the Avenger

Billy Budd, which as a novel is a skinny English Lit cousin of Moby Dick and as a play was drydocked after a brief Broadway run, finds itself as a beautiful, terrifying and heartbreaking film. The transformation is the more admirable for the fact that Billy Budd is essentially a morality play with an unpopular moral: absolute good and absolute evil must always destroy each other.

Billy Budd, a handsome and guileless young sailor, steps on deck of H.M.S. Avenger one day in 1797, impressed into naval service at a time when the French threatened the British navy on one hand and the spirit of mutiny sapped it on the other. His shipmates are a sorry, ragtag lot, full of hate and fear for the sadistic master-at-arms, Mister Claggart. They find in Billy Budd's artless warmth a hope that somehow he can save them from Claggart's bullying; even the Avenger's aloof Captain Vere takes a liking to the pure-minded boy.

But Vere, an inflexibly moral man, runs his ship under Britain's stern Articles of War, and his instrument for enforcing discipline is Claggart. As long as Claggart keeps his villainy within the bounds of the articles, Vere, though he despises him, feels compelled to keep him aboard. This is a fateful decision, for it seals a doom not only for Claggart but for Billy Budd as well.

Billy's almost allegorical Goodness is incomprehensible to Claggart; the boy seems ignorant of the possibility of evil in anyone. One night, coming off watch and seeing Claggart brooding by the rail, Billy asks permission to stay on deck and look at the sea. "I suppose the Handsome Sailor may do many things forbidden to his messmates," says Claggart. "You have a pleasant way with you, Billy. Tell me, what do you think of me?" And Billy replies, "I never met a man like you. sir. The nights are lonely. Perhaps I could talk to you between watches."

Claggart: Aye, the nights are long.

Billy: Can I talk to you again? It would mean a lot to me.

Claggart: Perhaps to me, too.

Then, suddenly realizing that Billy has almost succeeded in piercing his only armor, he cries: "Oh, no! You would charm me, too. Get away! Get away!" For Claggart sees Billy's goodness as a threat to the evil equilibrium of his very existence.

Falsely, Claggart accuses the sailor of plotting mutiny. Vere knows that Claggart is lying and, seeing a chance to trap him, he sends for Billy Budd to deny the charge. Billy, facing Claggart in Vere's cabin, struggles to speak, but can only make the terrible sounds of stammering. Suddenly, he gives action to his horror with a lunging, double-fisted blow that sends Claggart to the deck, dead with a broken skull.

Vere's only course, under the Articles of War, is to court-martial Billy Budd for killing a superior officer. And the only penalty prescribed by the articles is death. "We don't deal with justice here, but with the law," Vere finally persuades a member of the drumhead court. And the court knows of no way to save Billy Budd, makes the soul-wrenching decision that he must hang. Next morning, as the rope tightens around his neck, Billy cries in a clear voice: "God bless Captain Vere!"

The film's Billy Budd is Terence Stamp, 23, son of a Thames tugboat man. His Michelangelic good looks and country-boy smile make Billy's unaffected virtue believable where a better-known actor might have failed. As Captain Vere, Peter Ustinov shuns mawkishness in his role of naval Pilate; he reveals Vere's humanity subtly, and when Billy's wonderful and cruel farewell rings out, Vere stands destroyed by what he has had to do. Robert Ryan is the terrible Mister Claggart who presides so zealously at floggings: once, after counting out ten lashes while a sailor is whipped, his mouth frames a silent "eleven." Then, standing alone at the rail, he continues to strike his own flank with his rattan crop, privately counting out lash after lash in seething frustration. Ustinov, who produced and directed the film and helped write the script, has the good taste to resist turning Billy's fate into a jeremiad, or Vere's torment into a tour de force.

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