Moby Dick | | Cast : | Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart | | Director : | John Huston | | Studio : | MGM/UA Video | | Format : | Full Screen, Closed-captioned | | Released Date : | June 27, 1956 | | DVD Released Date : | June 19, 2001 | | Language : | Unknown (Dubbed), English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | NR (Not Rated) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | March 18, 2005 | | Summary | Who IS this Ahab? | Content
 | I saw this movie last weekend, coming fresh from my second reading of the book, a reading that was twice as powerful as the first time I'd read it in college. I was expecting a good experience, though with the date of the movie I was prepared for some deviations from the novel. I was not expecting what I recieved in Huston and Bradberry's redaction of the plot.
Moby Dick is probably an unfilmable novel, but the scenes of action and the details of the 19th century whaling trade make it understandable that a director would try anyway. And Huston and Bradberry start off well, collapsing some of the sprawling episodes in the beginning of the novel to one place and time. You lose nothing by keeping all the action in New Bedford and indeed the opening gains a bit in power. However, even here there are some serious missteps, such as allowing for a glimpse of Ahab walking the streets of New Bedford. In the novel Ahab is only talked about, not seen, for the first 100 pages or so. This helps to keep tension around the character growing, so that when he does appear he is as much myth as man. It also parallels the greater absence of the title character, who of course never appears in the flesh until the last three chapters of the novel.
Once we get aboard the Pequod, the script loses faithfulness in ways that are quite harmful to the suspense of the plot and to the philosophic issues dealt with in the novel. Ahab appears too frequently, especially at the beginning...and only his monomanical speeches are kept. The more soul revealing soliliquies that make Ahab such a haunting and paradoxical character in the novel are excised and Ahab becomes all rage, more monster than man. This does a severe violence to Melville's character and his development. It's little wonder that Gregory Peck felt he couldn't bring this character to life in the movie....there's no real life in the writing.
The deviations from the novel are legion. The meetings with other whaling ships, which help to shape the legend of the White Whale in the novel, are cut down to two meetings, and not even two of the most important. The character of Flask is given short shrift...while Stubb's humor is never very evident (a fault of the actor as much as the script). Starbuck comes across as an office clerk rather than a brave, careful, and ultimately moral and nobel man. Pip is almost completely elided, which robs Ahab of some of his most touching and humanizing scenes. And though the removal of Fedullah, the satan figure of the novel, perhaps makes things a bit more realistic, it also makes the ending deeply problematic and makes the Corpusants scene lose symbolic power and Zoroasterian philosophical overtones. Even the Symphony chapter, which is included here in truncated form, is so truncated that you don't have time to fully see Ahab's humanity almost come back and most viewers probably never realize that Starbuck in this scene has almost convinced Ahab to give up the whale.
But most tragic and disturbing is the fact that Huston and Bradberry determine to show us Moby Dick too early....before the Pequod's meeting with the Rachel. Though I understand the need to telescope the three days chase at the end of the novel into one extended scene, by adding this earlier sighting, the power for the final confrontation with the Whale is destroyed and we never get that wonderful scene where the White Whale is first spied swimming in divine beauty. This image is perhaps one of the most important in an image ladened novel, and losing it weakens the identification of Moby Dick with God and with disinterested Nature, which is beautiful and terrible at the same time in Melville's world.
The primary problems I think with the movie reside in the screenplay, but there are also many problems with casting. Peck actually does a fine job with material that just isn't nuanced enough. He makes as much as he can over Ahab's few human moments, but they occur way to late in the movie to help us feel anything but empty for Ahab. Richard Baseheart is woefully miscast as Ishmael, impressing us less as the highly educated underachiever of Melville, and more of a straight out rube. Queequeeg is just way too old and way too stiff for his part. Stubb lacks humor and Starbuck seems more like Captain Bligh than like Melville's hero. Even the best things about the movie...the whaling scenes, leave us with a sense of incongruity. Whaling looks like jolly fun, while Melville makes it abundantly clear that it is life and death business.
So, even with the best of intentions, Huston is unable to deliver a movie that has any of the real impact of the Melville story. I am actually rather certain that noone can capture it in it's full power and nuance. However, I hope that in the future a director like Peter Weir, who's Master and Commander showed him capable of understanding the unique atmosphere of windpowered sailing, and who's Gallipoli showed him sensitive to the poetry in basic stories of survival, might decide to try his hand at the book. There's still a good movie to be made of this book, even if it can't include everything the author could. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 18, 2005 | | Summary | Haunting | Content
| There is a scene in this movie as the Penrod sets sail in which Starbuck looks off in the distance and sees his wife and young children bidding him farewell as he departs. The captured look on his face as he looks into the distance towards them seems to indicate his thought he will not return to them. This scene is punctuated by a part of the haunting musical score that underlies this dramatic, but understated scene....That image has struck with me ever since seeing this many years ago.... |
| Rating | | | Date | March 16, 2005 | | Summary | Aye, it was Moby Dick that tore my soul and body . . . | Content
| A great screen version of the greatest American novel. Gregory Peck plays the vengeful Captain Ahab, and he brings to the character a fierceness of purpose and madness that is awesome. The picture, written admirably for the screen by Ray Bradbury, sticks to the action-filled highlights of the book, with just the right combination of man vs. God added for good measure. Some of these include: Orson Welles as Father Maple with his sermon about Jonah; the first catch; the meeting with The Rachel; the calm and then the storm; and the final lowering of the boats against Moby Dick. Melville wrote in an almost mock Biblical (King James) style, and that flavor is retained magnificently in the movie. This is a wonderful and moving screen presentation. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 21, 2005 | | Summary | To my mind the masterpiece of John Huston! | Content
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Herman Melville was an avid admirer and exhaustive reader of William Shakespeare. This fact somehow fed the febrile imagination stating an obsessive chase between the nature's forces represented by Moby Dick the assassin whale that destroyed the existence of Ahbab.
This passionate conflict overcomes by far the limits of the anecdotic character and places us in the big stage: the man against the nature; the will facing the fate. The presence of Prometheus emerges clearly in this singular challenge.
Visually stunning, admirably played by Peck in one of his most smouldering performances ever made. And the additional presence of Orson Welles as the preacher in the first third of the picture and the masterful and inspired direction of John Huston make of this one of my 200 cult movies in any age.
Another point to remark resides in the fact this movie was chosen as an example of Leadership in the reviewed book: Movies for Leaders with these other films: Hoosiers, Bridge on the Kwai River and Wizard of Oz.
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| Rating | | | Date | December 18, 2004 | | Summary | Excellent :) | Content
| I love this older version much better then the Halmark remake. The sea, the ships, the way everyone carried themselves made you actually think you were there =)
Gregory Peck plays Cptn Ahab so good I now couldnt picture Ahab as being depict by anyone else! |
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