Moby Dick (1956)

"A White Whale I Say" ~ A Luciferian Allegory Played Out On The High Seas

Released in '56, `Moby Dick' is one of the film classics of the fifties. Surprisingly the film quality is rather drab at times with the appearance of old newsreel footage. This is generally the case with the shots aboard the Pequot showing billowing sails or the ship from a distance. Yet at other times it's quite artistic and mesmerizing such as; the close-up portrait cameos of the old women standing on the dock, or the brooding sermon delivered by Orson Welles at the beginning.

However there are two things that raise this film to a higher, mythic level. Those two things are the magnificent performance by Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab and of course the white whale. Peck delivers a signature performance as the obsessive and defiant sea captain willing to forfeit not only his life but his soul for one more opportunity to slay the great white solitary that haunts his thoughts and dreams.

Ahh..., and then there's the whale. Moby Dick is haunting, frightening and irresistible. He's gigantic, remote and seemingly unaware with the activities of Ahab and his crew thus symbolizing all the aspects of a divinity unconcerned with its creation. It's truly a cosmic confrontation between the sacred and the profane, immortality and mortality, God and Lucifer.

`Moby Dick' is a film that entertains on so many levels. It's a worthy addition to any personal DVD library. July 29, 2008

Thar she blows...literally

The 1956 version of Moby Dick is one of those nostalgic pieces of film, that sci-fi fans probably rent just to laugh at the special effects, and they would definitely not be disappointed. The action sequences with the whales were flat-out terrible, they were very drawn out and seemed to play off a loop-feed, where you would see the whale rise and descend the exact same way over and over again, until you were seasick yourself. Aside from that, the dialogue and action on the ship were not bad, but the camera was almost entirely consumed with Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck) who did a fine job, in spite of going a bit overboard and breaking into Shakespearean soliloquies which were so wooden and long-winded, it left one wondering how long he could keep it up without bursting out in laughter. The final scenes with Moby Dick were as ridiculous as the rest of the whale scenes but demonstrated Ahab's amazing dexterity in riding atop the whale while it dove under and jumped across the ocean!
If you have time, skip the film and read the book. Melville is too gifted a writer to substitute such a poor rendition, and his works are filled with too much rich detail and satire for a film to encompass. January 15, 2008

A modern moby dick

Many of the problems of this production relate to the attempt to compress a cadenced epic into 2 hours. That is to say they are understandable and forgivable. But it also has some gratuitous changes that radically alter major themes in the book and I would say create a more modern sensibility. Hardcore Moby Dick fans and originalists should be aware of this going in, or they will likely spout blood and turn belly up.

The first and foremost of these changes was the decision to jettison Ahab's demonic boat crew, headed by Zoroastrian Fedallah. Ahab's smuggling a private boat crew on board is part and parcel of his blasphemous megalomania and shutting off from the ship of society. Likewise Fedallah's hubris-inspiring oracles are also the portal through which the familiar ancient greek tragedy structure is conveyed into the book, and the primary vehicle by which the supernatural is kept near at hand. But this is all eliminated, while room is made for a 2 minute musical number at the Spouter Inn. If this were a decision of filmmaking convenience, it would be unforgivable. By the end, it's pretty clear that something else is going on. Ahab's blasphemy and hubris is deliberately muted throughout, and the entire production is deliberately less supernatural.

I think you have to jump to the altered ending to really get the gist of what was going on here. In this movie ending, instead of dead Fedallah lashed to the whale, we have dead Ahab, caught up in his own ropes of revenge, with the rythmic sea swell imparting a beckoning motion to his dead arm. Instead of a warning to Ahab, we have a grotesque and senseless final temptation for the crew to follow his madness. And they do, as steadfast, moral Starbuck is lured over to Ahab's side. Turning against his own earlier admonitions both to Ahab on the deck and to Stubb and Flask in the cabin, Starbuck casts off into calamity. He simultaneously follows a literally senseless natural command (Ahab's dead waving), and makes a blasphemy of his profession, implying their job as whalers is simply to go to war with nature and to kill, rather than to reap a holy harvest for the good of their fellow men as he earlier maintained. "After him... we are whaling men, no less. We don't run from whales, we kill 'em. We'll kill Moby Dick!" Thus with the death of Ahab, the madness that has spread in the crew inexplicably penetrates the moral loadstar.

As Starbuck orders the pursuit of the whale, the massive white fist of god turns on the ship and total calamity ensues. This is obviously a monumental change from the book. Upon consideration, this ending underscores the point that the movie presents a whole different variation on the book's theme of blasphemous monomania. The screenplay sounds notes more resonant with the banality of evil and the natural metastasis of madness -- a strain movie-Starbuck himself touches on at the end of his little legal insurrection scene. "Thus madmen create more madmen," he laments, a statement and sentiment not really in the book, but certainly a predominant theme of the post WWII years. This whole line of thought lies in stark contrast to the solitary peals of doom and supernatural evil that Melville's bell was ringing out in the 19th century.

Ultimately, this is a more modern Moby Dick, with a different and more complicated conception of evil, a lot less room for supernatural mumbo-jumbo, and a significantly diminished Ahab. This last point is why Peck's unprepossessing performance is so thoroughly acceptable. A real thunder-and-lightening Ahab isn't required or even necessarily desirable in this screenplay.

I'm not an originalist when it comes to cinema. I don't expect Moby Dick the movie to faithfully represent the book, since that is flat impossible anyway. What I don't like though is bad compromises, and there are some in this movie. Do the vestiges of the supernatural left in the movie (which basically is just the prophesy of the Elijah character and Queequeg casting bones) serve any purpose at all beyond cinematic camp?

I think the animus of this screenplay is the discovery of the banality of evil and it's total ascendence when good men lose the moral compass. It's a good adaptation of the book in the sense that it effectively uses our current conception of evil, as opposed to a 19th century one, which I think could make it more powerfull for a modern audience. But I'd like to see that played out more completely, without the obviously colaborative compromises. I guess Bradbury was a young man at this time and perhaps Huston ran roughshod over him. November 8, 2007

Moby Dick

I have read Melville's novel several times, it's a favorite of mine. I saw this film 20-30 years ago, and just received it on DVD, hoping I was wrong then: that this movie was a disaster, to the book, to movies.
I was unfortunately hoping in vain. It's the ultimate disaster. The dialogue tells the pictures, the pictures tells the dialogue, the music (horrible and horribly used) tells the dialogue and the pictures, and backwards ... it goes on and on. Unbelievable that for instance Kurosawa about the same time shot Seven Samurai.
September 13, 2007

Moby Dick my review

Moby Dick is a great book, The movie version is good. Gregory Peck may not have been right for Captain Ahab,but was good enough to show the revenge maddend whaler as the villan of the film. The cast does a good job, Ishmael and Quequeg were well played. The special effecects were good its easy topull for Moby Dick over Ahab. Moby Dick is great look at not only whaling but obsession, hate, and the grim stuggle whalers faced at sea. June 18, 2007

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