Moby Dick (1956)
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Moby Dick Movie Review
Moby Dick is a 1956 adventure film directed by John Huston and starring Gregory Peck. It’s a pretty solid adaptation of the titular book.
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“I don’t give reasons. I give orders!“
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Aboard The Pequod, Captain Ahab sets sail across the seas in search of a white-skinned whale called Moby Dick to seek revenge from the beast for breaking his leg. This novel is rather lengthy and verbose, which doesn’t lend itself well for the feature film treatment. But if you make it in the vein of an adventure flick, you can make something out of it, which is exactly what Huston did with this adaptation, which is surprisingly solid and quite underrated.
When it comes to the themes of the story, the only one that survived to the eventual movie is of course the subject of obsession and mania. And this one was well explored, but I wished to have seen more of the themes from the source material. But as an adventure film, this film largely worked, resulting in an engaging, spirited adventure that is historically accurate and meticulously detailed.
One of the highlights of the picture is its emphasis on strong technical achievements. The costumes are on-point and the same goes for hairstyling, each perfectly mirroring this period in history. The score is also pleasantly dramatic and epic while the sound effects are evocative and highly realistic.
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The only aspect that I didn’t quite adore was the cinematography. You see, instead of shooting the film in Technicolor, they filmed it in an oddly subdued, washed up style that honestly wasn’t pretty to the eyes. I appreciated this artistic choice from the perspective of realism and historicity, but I still wished for a more beautiful picture overall.
Let’s talk about the characters and the actors portraying them. Gregory Peck was a mixed bag as Captain Ahab. While I did appreciate this casting choice as he looked and sounded the part, Peck himself was only okay in the role as he should have gone bigger and even more theatrical in this instance as the role demanded it. This was Huston’s problem more than anything else, so I cannot really blame Peck for it. But the character himself was significantly more focused on than in the novel, which made for a strong character study.
But all the others suffered as a result of that heavy emphasis on Ahab. Richard Basehart was thoroughly forgettable as Ishmael and the character simply did not work in the movie version as much as he did in the novel. Starbuck and Stubb have their moments, but Queequeg also disappointed me as Friedrich von Ledebur did not quite look the part – I imagined a much bigger and more physically imposing man. This iconic character from the book was also sidelined here, receiving very little screen time, which was so frustrating.
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This Moby Dick movie wasn’t wholly engaging as the second half had its slower moments, but it’s more involving than the book, which goes without saying. The ending was iconic and so well filmed, but the beginning left a lot to be desired as it was extremely rushed. The whaling scenes looked surprisingly authentic, which elevated the movie to greater heights.
John Huston’s Moby Dick is a solid adaptation of a novel that must have been difficult to adapt to the big screen. While it’s not as thematically rich as the book and it focused too extensively on Captain Ahab, forgetting in the process to develop the other characters, the movie was still solid as it functioned surprisingly well as an adventure movie with excellent attention to detail and a great score and sound, though the washed-up cinematography was a problematic choice.
My Rating – 4
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