Billy Budd is a 1962 British historical drama-adventure film produced, directed, and co-written by Peter Ustinov.

But Budd's steadfast optimism remains; when asked to critique the horrible stew the crew must eat, he offers "It's hot.

Though Budd manages to enchant the crew, his attempts at befriending the brutal master-at-arms, John Claggart, are unsuccessful.

Claggart orders Squeak to find means of putting Budd on report and to implicate him in a planned mutiny.

Vere intervenes in the final stages of deliberations - which at that point are in support of Budd - to argue the defendant must be found guilty for even striking Claggart, not to mention killing him.

Condemned to be hanged from the ship's yardarm at dawn the following morning, Budd takes care to wear his good shoes.

The crew breaks off from the potential mutiny to return fire, and in the course of battle a piece of the ship's rigging falls on Vere, killing him.

Melville's biographer accidentally stumbled upon it when going through a trunk of the writer's papers in his granddaughter's New Jersey home in 1919, and it was finally published in 1924.