Moby Dick

This is a film that becomes part of you. I used to watch it over and over again on TV when it was shown during my childhood in the 1960's, and I never tire of watching it. And whenever I find myself living somewhere away from the ocean, the longing is intense to find water again. "Call me Ishmael".

The screenplay was written by Ray Bradbury, and it was his first. In his lectures and interviews, Bradbury always seems to tell the story of how John Huston contacted him out of the blue for this assignment. Evidently, he flew Bradbury and his wife to Ireland, where the science fiction writer was holed up in a hotel for a few weeks, in a wonderful agony of creation.

Bradbury has always been enamoured with classic novels. His book "Fahrenheit 451" told us how great literature somehow becomes subversive, in a controlled society. Under fascism, individuals are not encouraged to understand what it is to be truly human. Life becomes flat, and it is a deliberate process.

Before I had a VCR, I taped this movie on an audio cassette. It was an amazing experience to see it unfold in my mind's eye.

Bradbury put his whole heart into this screenplay, and the result can never be matched.

For those folks that want great literature without having to read a 500-page tome, then this Readers Digest like condensation might be the ticket. All the high points of Moby Dick are touched on starting with 'Call me Ishmael," and so on.

As all have already pointed out, Gregory Peck has nailed the Ahab character. You got me how he managed the whalebone peg leg. The obsessive rush to take vengeance on the great whale boils in crazed Ahab's head and certainly his crew one by one catch the fever for either greed or blind allegiance. Therefore, our allegorical story full of biblical references mete out large portions of philosophical sophisms, enough for the entire Humanities Departments at fifty Universities to burn the midnight whale oil; oh, the reams of paper written about poor Moby, we're talking deforestation here.

If ever there was a story to get young men to read Lit, Moby Dick is the one.

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.

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.

"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.