Moby Dick

1930's "Moby Dick" is a very, very loose translation of the Herman Melville story. In fact, so much is different, it's practically a different story! It's based more on John Barrymore's silent film, "The Sea Beast", and he's returned for this sound version.

When the film begins, it's obvious that the Captain Ahab in the film isn't the one in the novel. Instead of being a stern, joyless man leader as Gregory Peck played him in 1956, Barrymore's Ahab is a common sailor....more like Popeye or Bluto! He's a fun-loving galoot with tattoos galore and a lust for life. But this happy demeanor does change when he later meets up with the whale, Moby Dick. There's also a romance...and I know most people do NOT think of this story as a romance!! But these aren't the only major changes from the book....the ending is also 100% different!! Apparently, the studio didn't like the novel very much and decided to very liberally change it.

In many ways, this is much more a John Barrymore film than a Herman Melville novelization. On the positive side, the novel is pretty dull reading...and this film isn't dull. But it also misses so much of the point of the story and instead is a showcase for Barrymore's flamboyant acting and personality.

So is it any good? Well, for American Literature professors, it's probably a bad choice of films to watch! Others, however, might enjoy it very much provided they don't care about the source material. The special effects, for 1930, are very impressive and the film captures the look of the 1840s quite nicely. A few scenes were actually lifted directly from "The Sea Beast" (such as when Ahab is attacked by the whale). And, the amputation scene is amazingly vivid and effective. My advice is to watch the film and enjoy it for what it is.

As others have mentioned, this is a very loose adaptation of the novel. The main reason to watch is Barrymore's performance as Ahab in this, the oldest surviving sound film in which he is featured. He transforms from a crusty lusty happy sailor into a very dark soul after Moby Dick bites off his right leg from below the knee. There is a scene relating to the cauterization of that wound that I find hard to watch today, so I can just imagine how 1930 audiences reacted. Ahab always fancied himself a bit of a ladies man and now he fears not so much how women in general will react to him but how his fiancée Faith(Joan Bennett) will react. His worst fears are realized when she first sees him after he loses his leg and she runs away screaming in horror. The complicating factor here is that Ahab's brother Derek considered Faith to be his girl before Ahab came into port and won her heart. Derek's pride was hurt when Faith picked Ahab over himself, and now he has an opportunity for revenge.

The precode elements in this filmed version include a heathen fellow whom Ahab becomes friends with and the fact that Ahab enlists the supernatural powers this fellow has via his gods on his worldwide quest to find and kill Moby Dick. You really have to marvel at the production values in this one. The sound mix is still Vitaphone - sound on disc - yet there are quite a few outdoor scenes and the film is not static at all. To put it mildly, the Warners were known for thrift, yet they took the time to make this one look good.

I don't understand the rather low rating on this one as I found it thoroughly entertaining and would recommend it for anyone who appreciates the early talkies and John Barrymore's acting talents.

This film & it's silent predecessor, "The Sea Beast"(1926), both starred John Barrymore. Some have said while the films' took liberties with Melville's text, the visualizations were superb on these two films, particularly the silent version. In fact John Barrymore created the very personification of Captain Ahab and to many was more of what Melville envisioned than Gregory Peck's fine but (Lincolnesque) Ahab 26 years later. The success of "The Sea Beast" was a huge hit for Warner Brothers in 1926 and when talkies arrived they, like other Hollywood studios ie MGM, carted out recent previous silent successes for sound remake. Douglas Fairbanks Jr once said that between "The Sea Beast" & "Moby Dick", that "The Sea Beast" was the superior movie and that he had seen it numerous times. Audiences agreed with Fairbanks Jr at the box office and this made the silent version of the Melville story, butchered though it may be, a likely candidate for an early talkie remake. Barrymore is obviously older in the talkie after having been more svelte in the silent The Sea Beast. His face is now beginning to take on it's 1930s jowlish appearance due to the effect of his continuing alcoholism. He had recently been very ill after a cruise with wife Dolores(who costarred in The Sea Beast)on their yacht. This film offers Barrymore an opportunity to use his marvelous voice to impart the character of Ahab but denies him the opportunity to get to do some really outlandish 'mad-man' makeup as he had done in "The Sea Beast" and other silent films lke "Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde". The Moby Dick prop used in this remake is superior and way more convincing than in the silent film. But it's still not on a par with John Hustons 1956 whale prop filmed in believable muted colors.

Since this is a rearranging or reinventing of what Melville intended it would be fun to speculate if he would get a chuckle out of showing Ahab as a young man with both legs intact as well as having a female love interest. Purists don't like this tampering of Melville text but 1920s audiences were either ignorant or just didn't seem to mind good storytelling through the medium of motion pictures. Thus the part of Moby Dick concerning Ahab's dallying as a young man and his love for this girl Esther is enough to fill a prequel book or movie leading up to the famous encounter with the Great White Whale. The last part of the movie after they kill Moby Dick and Ahab lives and arrives back home to Esther is a far fetched sequel story in itself. I think Melville & everybody would disagree with the fact that Ahab lives but it would still be enough for a separate story and possibly leaving enough future story open for Ahab to perhaps hunt down and kill 'the son of Moby Dick'. In this age of Sequels & Prequels we live in , a surviving Ahab killing Moby's son is not pablum but perhaps just good fantasy story telling.

Once one gets over the fact that this 1930 adaptation of Herman Melville's classic sea story has an at best tenuous relationship to the novel it's based on, it's quite enjoyable. John Barrymore makes an heroic Ahab, and Joan Bennett is fetching as his love interest (yes, I know). Warner Brothers went all out with this one, and as Barrymore was still a top leading man at the time, did a beautiful job with at least the visual aspects of the story, and the film is at times breathtaking to behold. Alas, they threw away most of the plot! Such were the ways of Hollywood. Noble Johnson makes for the best Queequeg I've ever seen, though.

John Barrymore can act. His performance as Captain Ahab is the best I've ever seen. That might not be saying much because the novel "Moby Dick" despite being as popular as it is has only been brought to the screen four times and the first two, this version being the latter of the two are based on a stage play adaptation "The Sea Beast." This movie adds a love interest to the proceedings and changes and alters the ending and character relationships. Is it blasphemy? All I can say if you do not know the plot of Moby Dick and just recognize it as most people do as a story about a man chasing a whale, you'll love this version. Heck, I know the story and I loved it. I think it is much better than the more faithful Huston-Peck version or TNT-Patrick Stewart version. First for a 1930 version, it has aged well. The special effects including the sea sequences are better than some movies made today and almost equal to the "Perfect Storm", in certain places. Moby Dick itself is a sight to behold. It has to be at list twenty times the size of the shark in Jaws. It's a wonder of prop making indeed. Barrymore, I repeat his fabulous embodying the character completely. Well, this was his second time playing the character. All, in all, good Hollywood entertainment. 9/10.