‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’ Review: William Friedkin’s Final Film Is Minor, but His Conviction Shines Through
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Somewhere, at any given moment, there’s a film director adapting a stage play to the big screen.
Yet it’s rare, and fascinating, to see a filmmaker steeped to the gills in cinema as cinema who also has a grand obsession with the theater.
Robert Altman was like that. His great films of the ’70s were so naturalistic they seemed to dissolve the edges of the movie frame, yet in the ’80s, starting with “Come Back to the Five & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” he adapted nine plays in a row, the last of which, in 1988, was a darkly solid made-for-TV version of “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.” William Friedkin, the legendary director who passed away last month, just before his 88th birthday, represents another case like Altman’s.
In the early ’70s, when Friedkin commandeered Hollywood and the world with the extraordinary one-two punch of “The French Connection” (1971) and “The Exorcist (1973), there wasn’t a film director alive more aggressively, enthrallingly, ferociously cinematic.
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