Moby Dick

In the 1960s English professors and film critics delighted in bashing this film. The professors took the line that the movie wasn't Melville, while the critics dismissed Peck's interpretation of Captain Ahab as "stiff." Neither view holds up well today.

Huston's "Moby Dick" isn't the whole book, but what film is? Though he doesn't give you the breadth or the depth, Huston does deliver much of the spirit and heart of the novel. The production values are splendid and the supporting players outstanding. No one can top Orson Welles as Father Mapple, but Leo Genn's Starbuck comes close. My only complaint is with Richard Basehart, who was a good actor but at 42 much too old for Ishmael, who I believe is in his early 20s. Stray thought - I wonder what James Dean would have done with Ishmael?

As for Peck, who else could have attempted this role in the mid-50s? John Wayne? Gary Cooper? Let's be serious. Sterling Hayden (who actually was quite a sailor) had the proper face and frame, but Hayden was never a box office draw and likely wasn't considered. More to the point, Peck was a much better actor. Though a bit young for Ahab, he certainly conveys both the man's insanity and his magnetism, which of course are inseparable. In so many films ("Twelve O'Clock High", "Pork Chop Hill", "The Guns of Navarone"), Peck was nothing if not a leader. Here he leads convincingly, which is essential, for Ahab is not Captain Quegg. In spite of everything Ahab's men do not mutiny, they follow him down, and with Peck in the role you accept it. Was he stiff? Well, try walking around with a pegleg. You'll probably feel a bit stiff yourself. Better to call Peck's Ahab rigid and unflinching, qualities that are central to the character. I have not seen Patrick Stewart's interpretation, but I doubt his Ahab achieves either Peck's demonic fury or his stone-hearted resolve.

There have been few better films of life at sea and few better interpretations of classic literature. "Moby Dick" is a treasure grown richer with age.

When John Huston was casting for Moby Dick he got to make it on condition that he get a name actor to play Ahab. He went to Gregory Peck who was surprised by the offer. Given his image and the roles he had played up to that time, Peck thought he'd be better cast as Starbuck the first mate. Nevertheless he agreed to do Ahab.

Peck got mixed reviews at the time, but over the course of 50 years his performance has gotten better with time. The film itself which was shot in Ireland and Wales has also aged well. It's a nice depiction of life on a whaling ship in the 1840s and the crew of the Pequod are nicely cast in their roles.

Orson Welles was set to do his own adaption of Moby Dick and canceled his film when he heard his friend John Huston was doing Moby Dick. Welles asked about doing Ahab, but was given the small role of Father Mapple, the minister who blesses the Pequod's voyage. In fact Huston gave Welles a free hand to do the scene as he saw fit and the results are gratifying.

Of course Herman Melville's novel is about obsession and vengeance. I've always thought the point of Moby Dick is that the evil white whale who Ahab so personalizes and demonizes is just a whale doing his whale thing trying to stay alive. It is in fact the whalers who hunt him and his kind. And Ahab losing his leg is what we would call an occupational accident. The evil is how Ahab seduces the whole crew into his own madness, even first mate Starbuck, played winningly by Leo Genn who is the voice of reason and civilization.

Other cast members to note are Harry Andrews as second mate Stub, Friedrich Ledebuhr as Queequeg the Pacific Islander harpooner, and of course Richard Basehart as Ishmael who tells the tale.

Some critics panned this pic when it came out - Peck too wooden, the script too cliched, etc, etc. Don't believe a word of it. I saw this one when I was 8 or 9, and for years I watched it every time it came on TV - even in B&W! Peck isn't wooden, he's intense and fascinating (my favorite scene: in his cabin, saying to Starbuck, "That bed is a coffin"). The language may sound stilted, but it's MELVILLE'S, and the cast sink into it with conviction.

Some critic (I don't know which) has said that Moby Dick (the book) is an "uncomfortable masterpiece" - or something like that - meaning that it's a hard pill to swallow. The movie is bound to be a hard pill for many viewers as well. But that's their loss. Huston's movie is a great big powerful thing - you believe in Peck's crazy passion, in Starbuck's gentleness, in Ishmael and Quequeg's bond, in the evil of the whale, even.

Another favorite sequence: the Pequot becalmed, the crew lying about under the intense sun, slowly going crazy. The climactic chase is superb and thrilling, of course; what it all adds up to is a film about the elements, and our relationship to them. The whale is just the biggest of a whole slew that constantly threaten to destroy us. Nature, our natures - all the things we fight against with our intelligence, that threaten to engulf us.

Beautiful film, one of Huston's best. I find the analogy with Hitler/Nazis in an earlier comment very interesting. Another would be with an earlier Huston film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - another film about people taking terrible chances for reasons that don't stand up to a lot of examination, whose biggest obstacle turns out to be themselves. By the way, will someone please rerelease Moby Dick in a restored version so we can get a really good look at all that glorious Technicolor?

This version of the Melville classic should, without question, be regarded as the penultimate screen adaptation of a masterwork of American fiction. Everything - absolutely everything - about this film works, from John Huston's brilliant direction, to the screenplay ( co-written by Ray Bradbury ), to the powerful and believable performances. Gregory Peck IS Ahab; if anyone defined and crystallized so megalomaniacal a character, it was Peck, hands down. Not that this should be interpreted as a slight to any of the supporting cast; it isn't. The casting is so good, in fact, that now we find it difficult, if not impossible, to view the supporting cast members in any other light, especially Frederich Ledebur: his choice by the producers as Queequeg was nothing if not dead on the money, as was the small but significant part of Elizah, as portrayed by Royal Dano. Granted, some liberties were taken with the book ( so what else is new? ), such as the squid being written out completely, but this was, and continues to be, necessary in order to make a movie that doesn't take five hours to play out. Yes, okay, it's a "Cliff's Notes" "Moby Dick", but if what you're after is good direction, outstanding ( one could say tour de force ) acting, and a tight screenplay, then this is the movie for you. Believe us, this is the one, NOT the remake with Patrick Stewart. Stewart's Ahab is basically Patrick Stewart playing Patrick Stewart playing Ahab or, to put it another way, Huston's "Moby Dick" needs to be remade about as badly as the rest of us need leukemia. 'Nuff said.

"We are all killers, on land and on sea," wrote Herman Melville more than 100 years ago. But the artistic failure of a recent television adaptation of his greatest work shows that some are killers, too, on screen. Movie makers. Butchers. Their guts are now gorged with Moby Dick.

"Majestic" raved "TV Guide" about USA Network's production of Melville's book. Reading that review I had a fantasy where Captain Ahab, with his sublime limp, walks into the magazine's office, shoves director John Huston's 1956 film of Moby Dick into the VCR, points to the screen and defiantly exclaims:

"There's majesty for you . . . "

. . . in the faces of men. Huston's film benefits from its intelligent casting of the seamen. The actors in the recent production are just pretty-boy imports from Los Angeles, rabble-rousers lacking the dignity that is gained from a lifetime of duty. But that dignity is plainly visible on the rugged faces of the men in the earlier film. One rarely sees that anymore.

. . . in the faces of women, too. The images of the women suffering as they watch their men go off to sea are utterly devastating, they hold so much emotional depth, so much beauty. The attention to detail in Huston's film is striking: the hairs on the chins of the old women, the tired, thick-skinned expressions of the wives and widows, the heavy shawls covering their heads.

. . . in the performances. Over 40 years ago when Orson Welles gave his performance as Father Mapple (a role which only a person with a special kind of magnificence could successfully take on), Gregory Peck might have been busily preparing for his role as Captain Ahab in the same film. What a testament to Peck's stature as one of our leading actors that throughout his career he could play not only Captain Ahab but also, in the recent production, Father Mapple.

. . . in the color. Huston's film is in Technicolor, a technique which produced colors not even seen in nature. The sky is now blue now red now green. The water is brown, pink, gray. Colors blend. Colors clash. By comparison, how banal the colors of our post-Technicolor world!

. . . in the mouth. The seamen have the exquisite mouths of pipe-smokers. The upper lip tight and stiff after so many hours pulled down in the puff.

. . . in the eyes. My favorite scene is where Peck as Captain Ahab famously proclaims: "Speak not to me of blasphemy. I'd strike the sun if it insulted me." The lighting, the acting, everything here is superb. The camera is focused tightly on Peck's face. The stark appearance of his eyes -- the tense, black irises all surrounded by gleaming white -- seems to reveal the subtext of the story. His eyes electrify!

John Huston's film says more in its two hours than USA Network's says in four; it suggests a lot and explains little, whereas the latter tries to explain a lot but says nothing. A great film, it doesn't butcher Melville's Moby Dick but adds to its power.