Talk:Billy Budd (film)

Character analysis
It would be nice if somebody could do a character analysis and also a part on how Peter Ustinov's idea of how Captain Vere is dealing with duty vs. morality in the movie while in the book some people think Captain Vere is the unseen evil because he acted with undue haste in hanging Billy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.19.14.44 (talk) 04:49, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Ending
The article claims that at the end of the film, Vere is killed by falling debris. I have seen the film many times and I have never seen Vere killed. Is this a restored ending? Every ending I've seen is the crew finally returning fire on the French vessel while Vere stares into space, preoccupied. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.45.211.179 (talk) 01:47, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Good find. I've fixed it up. Vere's death occurs in the book but not in the play/movie. ~ Alcmaeonid (talk) 15:42, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Nope sorry, you're both wrong on that. While the rigging is not shown actually falling on Vere, he is most assuredly shown after it had fallen on and killed him with the deceased Post Captain's right arm and hand visible. (This shot appears 37 seconds before the end of the film at 2:02:25.) A screen shot of this can be viewed here in which the dead Capt. Vere can be clearly identified by the braid visible on his sleeve. I have thus restored the deleted language in the article so that it again reflects how Cap. Vere died. Centpacrr (talk) 21:09, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Production
In the production section it is stated that "Melville's biographer accidentally stumbled upon" the lost novel "when going through a trunk of the writer's papers in his granddaughter's New Jersey home in 1919". It also states that Melville's widow worked to help complete it, however, in Melville's biographical data it states that she died in 1906. I assume this is an unintentional error based on a sequence of edits, and I don't know how to correct it. I assume that the widow helped complete the novel before or after her husband died in 1891, and the completed novel remained hidden until the biographer found it in 1919. To me it reads that she helped complete it after the biographer found it.Juve2000 (talk) 02:29, 21 March 2020 (UTC)