Moby Dick

Plot synopsis:
Ishmael travels in December from Manhattan Island to New Bedford with plans to sign up for a whaling voyage. The inn where he arrives is overcrowded, so he must share a bed with the tattooed Polynesian Queequeg, a harpooneer whose father was king of the (fictional) island of Rokovoko. The next morning, Ishmael and Queequeg attend Father Mapple's sermon on Jonah, then head for Nantucket. Ishmael signs up with the Quaker ship-owners Bildad and Peleg for a voyage on their whaler Pequod. Peleg describes Captain Ahab: "He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man" who nevertheless "has his humanities". They hire Queequeg the following morning. A man named Elijah prophesies a dire fate should Ishmael and Queequeg join Ahab. While provisions are loaded, shadowy figures board the ship. On a cold Christmas Day, the Pequod leaves the harbor.
Ishmael discusses cetology (the zoological classification and natural history of the whale), and describes the crew members. The chief mate is 30-year-old Starbuck, a Nantucket Quaker with a realist mentality, whose harpooneer is Queequeg; second mate is Stubb, from Cape Cod, happy-go-lucky and cheerful, whose harpooneer is Tashtego, a proud, pure-blooded Indian from Gay Head, and the third mate is Flask, also from Martha's Vineyard, short, stout, whose harpooneer is Daggoo, a tall African, now a resident of Nantucket.
When Ahab finally appears on the quarterdeck, he announces he is out for revenge on the white whale which took one leg from the knee down and left him with a prosthesis fashioned from a whale's jawbone. Ahab will give the first man to sight Moby Dick a doubloon, a gold coin, which he nails to the mast. Starbuck objects that he has not come for vengeance but for profit. Ahab's purpose exercises a mysterious spell on Ishmael: "Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine". Instead of rounding Cape Horn, Ahab heads for the equatorial Pacific Ocean via southern Africa. One afternoon, as Ishmael and Queequeg are weaving a mat — "its warp seemed necessity, his hand free will, and Queequeg's sword chance" — Tashtego sights a sperm whale. Immediately, five hidden figures appear whom Ahab has brought as his own boat crew. Their leader, Fedallah, a Parsee, is Ahab's harpooneer. The pursuit is unsuccessful.
Southeast of the Cape of Good Hope, the Pequod makes the first of nine sea-encounters, or "gams", with other ships: Ahab hails the Goney (Albatross) to ask whether they have seen the White Whale, but the trumpet through which her captain tries to speak falls into the sea before he can answer. Ishmael explains that because of Ahab's absorption with Moby Dick, he sails on without the customary "gam", which defines as a "social meeting of two (or more) Whale-ships", in which the two captains remain on one ship and the chief mates on the other. In the second gam off the Cape of Good Hope, with the Town-Ho, a Nantucket whaler, the concealed story of a "judgment of God" is revealed, but only to the crew: a defiant sailor who struck an oppressive officer is flogged, and when that officer led the chase for Moby Dick, he fell from the boat and was killed by the whale.
Ishmael digresses on pictures of whales, brit (microscopic sea creatures on which whales feed), squid and — after four boats lowered in vain because Daggoo mistook a giant squid for the white whale — whale-lines. The next day, in the Indian Ocean, Stubb kills a sperm whale, and that night Fleece, the Pequod's black cook, prepares him a rare whale steak. Fleece delivers a sermon to the sharks that fight each other to feast on the whale's carcass, tied to the ship, saying that their nature is to be voracious, but they must overcome it. The whale is prepared, beheaded, and barrels of oil are tried out. Standing at the head of the whale, Ahab begs it to speak of the depths of the sea. The Pequod next encounters the Jeroboam, which not only lost its chief mate to Moby Dick, but also is now plagued by an epidemic.
The whale carcass still lies in the water. Queequeg mounts it, tied to Ishmael's belt by a monkey-rope as if they were Siamese twins. Stubb and Flask kill a right whale whose head is fastened to a yardarm opposite the sperm whale's head. Ishmael compares the two heads in a philosophical way: the right whale is Lockean, stoic, and the sperm whale as Kantean, platonic. Tashtego cuts into the head of the sperm whale and retrieves buckets of oil. He falls into the head, and the head falls off the yardarm into the sea. Queequeg dives after him and frees his mate with his sword.
The Pequod next gams with the Jungfrau from Bremen. Both ships sight whales simultaneously, with the Pequod winning the contest. The three harpooneers dart their harpoons, and Flask delivers the mortal strike with a lance. The carcass sinks, and Queequeg barely manages to escape. The Pequod's next gam is with the French whaler Bouton de Rose, whose crew is ignorant of the ambergris in the gut of the diseased whale in their possession. Stubb talks them out of it, but Ahab orders him away. Days later, an encounter with a harpooned whale prompts Pip, a little black cabin-boy from Alabama, to jump out of his whale boat. The whale must be cut loose, because the line has Pip so entangled in it. Furious, Stubb orders Pip to stay in the whale boat, but Pip later jumps again, and is left alone in the immense sea and has gone insane by the time he is picked up.
Cooled sperm oil congeals and must be squeezed back into liquid state; blubber is boiled in the try-pots on deck; the warm oil is decanted into casks, and then stowed in the ship. After the operation, the decks are scrubbed. The coin hammered to the main mast shows three Andes summits, one with a flame, one with a tower, and one a crowing cock. Ahab stops to look at the doubloon and interprets the coin as signs of his firmness, volcanic energy, and victory; Starbuck takes the high peaks as evidence of the Trinity; Stubb focuses on the zodiacal arch over the mountains; and Flask sees nothing of any symbolic value at all. The Manxman mutters in front of the mast, and Pip declines the verb "look".
The Pequod next gams with the Samuel Enderby of London, captained by Boomer, a down-to-earth fellow who lost his right arm to Moby Dick. Nevertheless, he carries no ill will toward the whale, which he regards not as malicious, but as awkward. Ahab puts an end to the gam by rushing back to his ship. The narrator now discusses the subjects of 1) whalers supply; 2) a glen in Tranque in the Arsacides islands full of carved whale bones, fossil whales, whale skeleton measurements; 3) the chance that the magnitude of the whale will diminish and that the leviathan might perish.
Leaving the Samuel Enderby, Ahab wrenches his ivory leg and orders the carpenter to fashion him another. Starbuck informs Ahab of oil leakage in the hold. Reluctantly, Ahab orders the harpooneers to inspect the casks. Queequeg, sweating all day below decks, develops a chill and soon is almost mortally feverish. The carpenter makes a coffin for Queequeg, who fears an ordinary burial at sea. Queequeg tries it for size, with Pip sobbing and beating his tambourine, standing by and calling himself a coward while he praises Queequeg for his gameness. Yet Queequeg suddenly rallies, briefly convalesces, and leaps up, back in good health. Henceforth, he uses his coffin for a spare seachest, which is later caulked and pitched to replace the Pequod's life buoy.
The Pequod sails northeast toward Formosa and into the Pacific Ocean. Ahab, with one nostril, smells the musk from the Bashee isles, and with the other, the salt of the waters where Moby Dick swims. Ahab goes to Perth, the blacksmith, with bag of racehorse shoenail stubs to be forged into the shank of a special harpoon, and with his razors for Perth to melt and fashion into a harpoon barb. Ahab tempers the barb in blood from Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo.
The Pequod gams next with the Bachelor, a Nantucket ship heading home full of sperm oil. Every now and then, the Pequod lowers for whales with success. On one of those nights in the whaleboat, Fedallah prophesies that neither hearse nor coffin can be Ahab's, that before he dies, Ahab must see two hearses — one not made by mortal hands and the other made of American wood — that Fedallah will precede his captain in death, and finally that only hemp can kill Ahab.
As the Pequod approaches the Equator, Ahab scolds his quadrant for telling him only where he is and not where he will be. He dashes it to the deck. That evening, an impressive typhoon attacks the ship. Lightning strikes the mast, setting the doubloon and Ahab's harpoon aglow. Ahab delivers a speech on the spirit of fire, seeing the lightning as a portent of Moby Dick. Starbuck sees the lightning as a warning, and feels tempted to shoot the sleeping Ahab with a musket. Next morning, when he finds that the lightning disoriented the compass, Ahab makes a new one out of a lance, a maul, and a sailmaker's needle. He orders the log be heaved, but the weathered line snaps, leaving the ship with no way to fix its location.
The Pequod is now heading southeast toward Moby Dick. A man falls overboard from the mast. The life buoy is thrown, but both sink. Now Queequeg proposes that his superfluous coffin be used as a new life buoy. Starbuck orders the carpenter take care it is lidded and caulked. Next morning, the ship meets in another truncated gam with the Rachel, commanded by Captain Gardiner from Nantucket. The Rachel is seeking survivors from one of her whaleboats which had gone after Moby Dick. Among the missing is Gardiner's young son. Ahab refuses to join the search. Twenty-four hours a day, Ahab now stands and walks the deck, while Fedallah shadows him. Suddenly, a sea hawk grabs Ahab's slouched hat and flies off with it. Next, the Pequod, in a ninth and final gam, meets the Delight, badly damaged and with five of her crew left dead by Moby Dick. Her captain shouts that the harpoon which can kill the white whale has yet to be forged, but Ahab flourishes his special lance and once more orders the ship forward. Ahab shares a moment of contemplation with Starbuck. Ahab speaks about his wife and child, calls himself a fool for spending 40 years on whaling, and claims he can see his own child in Starbuck's eye. Starbuck tries to persuade Ahab to return to Nantucket to meet both their families, but Ahab simply crosses the deck and stands near Fedallah.
On the first day of the chase, Ahab smells the whale, climbs the mast, and sights Moby Dick. He claims the doubloon for himself, and orders all boats to lower except for Starbuck's. The whale bites Ahab's boat in two, tosses the captain out of it, and scatters the crew. On the second day of the chase, Ahab leaves Starbuck in charge of the Pequod. Moby Dick smashes the three boats that seek him into splinters and tangles their lines. Ahab is rescued, but his ivory leg and Fedallah are lost. Starbuck begs Ahab to desist, but Ahab vows to slay the white whale, even if he would have to dive through the globe itself to get his revenge.
On the third day of the chase, Ahab sights Moby Dick at noon, and sharks appear, as well. Ahab lowers his boat for a final time, leaving Starbuck again on board. Moby Dick breaches and destroys two boats. Fedallah's corpse, still entangled in the fouled lines, is lashed to the whale's back, so Moby Dick turns out to be the hearse Fedallah prophesied. "Possessed by all the fallen angels", Ahab plants his harpoon in the whale's flank. Moby Dick smites the whaleboat, tossing its men into the sea. Only Ishmael is unable to return to the boat. He is left behind in the sea, and so is the only crewman of the Pequod to survive the final encounter. The whale now fatally attacks the Pequod. Ahab then realizes that the destroyed ship is the hearse made of American wood in Fedallah's prophesy. The whale returns to Ahab, who stabs at him again. The line loops around Ahab's neck, and as the stricken whale swims away, the captain is drawn with him out of sight. Queequeg's coffin comes to the surface, the only thing to escape the vortex when Pequod sank. For an entire day, Ishmael floats on it, and then the Rachel, still looking for its lost seamen, rescues him.

Tags: revenge, romantic

Review:
His final triumph over Moby Dick and return to his sweetheart make for typical Hollywood pablum, but what's new, even after 70-odd years?
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.
This film & it's silent predecessor, "The Sea Beast"(1926), both starred John Barrymore.
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.
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.
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.
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..
A crazed sea captain searches the Seven Seas for MOBY DICK, the great white whale which maimed him.To enjoy this film on its own merits it would be well for the viewer to remind himself that great literature does not always become great cinema.
Indeed, the conclusion of the film is so radically different from the novel as to be almost startling.What will you find is a good-looking movie with very fine production values, featuring an enormously enjoyable performance by John Barrymore as Captain Ahab.
In short, the entire film is a star vehicle for Barrymore and he remains the primary reason to view it.Joan Bennett, as Ahab's love, and Lloyd Hughes, as Ahab's resentful younger brother, don't fare as well in comparison to Barrymore's scene-stealing antics.
Hughes' final moments, after being shanghaied onto Barrymore's ship, are his most effective, but Miss Bennett is not given much to do during her solemn sequences except to act patient and brave, which can be very dull.Silent film star Noble Johnson has one of his best talkie roles as the half-savage Queequeg, Ahab's only true friend.
Character actress Virginia Sale is quite droll in her brief role as a New Bedford spinster.The scenes actually showing Moby Dick are dramatic and frightening, even though the fate the script has in store for him would never have passed muster with Melville..
Herman Melville contributed the title and a studio scriptwriter added everything else.48 year old Barrymore plays 20-something Ahab Seeley, a happy go lucky sailor who is also a hard drinking woman chaser.
Plot complication 1: Ahab and Derek both fall for the same girl, the ministers daughter Faith (Joan Bennett).
Isn't love wonderful?) Plot complication 2: On his next voyage Ahab gets his leg bitten off by (wait for it) a giant white whale named Moby Dick.
I won't spoil it for you; this movie runs now and then on TCM so you can "sea" for yourself (bad pun, I admit it).John Barrymore overacts but what else is new?
Watch for silent film actor Nigel de Brulier as Elijah, the mad "prophet" who predicts trouble for Ahab early in the film.I like this movie, now I wish I could see that 1926 version.
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.
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.
Barrymore plays Ahab who, as the film begins, has both his legs.
After a gory meeting with Moby Dick in which he has his leg bloodily chewed off, Ahab returns to New Bedford where he meets the scorn of his fiancee because of his wooden prosthesis.
Vowing revenge, he returns to sea, kills Moby Dick, & (I kid you not) gets the girl.The film is ridiculous with the story completely re-written & Barrymore as a good-natured, capering Ahab.
Herman Melville lost his readers when his later novels like 'Moby Dick' became too philosophical and he died in obscurity in 1891.
There was renewed interest and a more favorable re-evaluation of his work in the 1920's with the discovery and publication of the manuscript for 'Billy Budd.' Hollywood was not far behind when Warner Brothers released a bowdlerized version of 'Moby Dick' renamed as 'The Sea Beast' with their biggest star, John Barrymore.
It's probably good that Melvile wasn't around to watch the plot changes and character additions such as Ahab's brother and fiancé.
In 1930 WB decided to remake the silent with Barrymore, still a big star, but whose legendary looks were beginning to fade from years of boozing which is noticeable in comparing both versions.
Although the Gregory Peck-John Huston version has its detractors, at least it's faithful to Melville's novel than this, I'll admit as a Barrymore fan, amusing chowder with its good production values.
We first meet Ahab Creely (he's got a last name and a brother) as one happy go lucky soul with two legs and intentions to marry Joan Bennett who is Father Mapple's daughter.
That brother Derek, played by Lloyd Hughes, also wants to marry Bennett.John Barrymore is Ahab in an over the top performance.
Barrymore had not quite mastered the sound cinema and he gave out with all the silent era histrionics plus a stage voice that would have shaken the rafters of any movie theater this film was playing in.We see Ahab lose his leg to the great whale Moby Dick and I have to say the amputation scene was pretty gruesome.
Still I'm sure 1930 audiences shuddered.After that the story of Ahab's hunt for the whale that he thinks made him unsightly in Joan Bennett's eyes.
That is not exactly Melville's motivation, in fact there are no women characters in Moby Dick as he wrote it.One of the things Melville did was invest the crew of Ahab's ship the Pequod with personalities.
I haven't read Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", but I've seen the 1956 Gregory Peck film and I have some preconceived notions about Captain Ahab and the story.
Much of the film establishes Ahab's background as a sailor, before his transformation into the revenge-minded Captain we all know ("Ahab Begins", as it were).John Barrymore's Ahab is a charming show-off and a notorious ladies' man.
While ashore in New Bedford he falls in love with Faith (Joan Bennett), much to the anger of his landlubber brother Derek (Lloyd Hughes), who'd already carved Faith's name with his own in the side of a tree.
Faith promises to marry Ahab when he returns from his next voyage, but by then the infamous white whale Moby Dick has left him a cripple.
The movie excludes the character of Ishmael, the book's narrator, and the Hollywood dream factory gives Melville's story a ridiculous fairytale ending.
Barrymore is gleefully enjoyable as Ahab and while it is a long way from a subtle performance(despite being a complex character it is hardly uncommon to overact him) it is so much fun to watch him.
Lloyd Hughes is rather bland and only shines in his final scene and Joan Bennett while lovely to look at has very little to do and doesn't register as a result.
The main reason to watch is Barrymore's performance as Ahab in this, the oldest surviving sound film in which he is featured.
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.
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 is a film that does not revolve solely around the mad and popular figure of Captain Ahab trying to mercilessly hunt down the white whale Moby Dick, who mercilessly took his leg off.
As Hollywood has done with many films over the years, they attempted to "beef up" the story by adding in newer subplots, which unfortunately developed to become the actual plot itself and forced out the more interesting points from the original novel into strictly subplots.
And Hollywood has thrown in another love story in order to attempt to add more drama and more improved effect into the plot of the film.While it is probably not the best film adaptation of "Moby Dick", this 1930 verison isn't a total failure by all accounts.
While I personally wanted to see more of Moby Dick himself, this film was done well for its time and age.
Maby the whale was shown on such a limited basis because of the infancy of special effects at the time.Bottom line, the 1930 version of "Moby Dick" will not be for everyone, mostly concerning fans of the original novel.
I have never read the novel Moby Dick although I am informed this adaptation has very little to do with its source material.
The film does open with a shot of the novel itself, however, the screen dissolves into the first paragraph of a Chapter 1 which does not exist in the book nor contains the famous line, "Call me Ishmael" (a character who also does not appear in this adaptation).
Yet even to judge Moby Dick from 1930 on its own merits this is a flawed film but has enough good in it to make it enjoyable; although it is a shame as all the ingredients are there for the making of a classic.
Oh whale, what can you do?John Barrymore's performance is unlike my perception of Captain Ahab and also differs from Gregory Peck's Lincolnesque performance from 1956.
In the latter half of the film, we see the Ahab more identified in pop culture as a bitter, vengeful man once Moby Dick robs him of a leg.
Nothing beats Barrymore hamming things up and in one scene we even see him wearing a cape and strutting like he did in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.Ahab's relationship with his brother's finance Faith (Joan Bennett) is an endearing bit of adultery as established in a cutesy scene taking place in a church in which they bond thanks a trusty Saint Bernard.
The other real striking presence in the film is Noble Johnson as Queequeg, of whom Ahab humorously refers to as a heathen throughout the film.The structure and pacing of Moby Dick is rather flimsy.
The special effects, on the other hand, are mostly good for the time, all except for one extremely poor close up of Moby Dick during the first encounter in which the little mouth of the beast is seen moving.
This version of "Moby Dick" insults the audience by claiming it is based on Melville's novel - even going so far as to show a phony first chapter sentence rather than the famous "Call me Ishmael".
In addition to having atrocious acting, even from John Barrymore, this is perhaps the greatest example of how far Hollywood (especially early Hollywood) would go to revise and change a famous novel just to beef up its chances at the box office.All of the novel's beautiful, poetic language has been absolutely eradicated, and Ahab has been changed from a brooding, blasphemous, obsessive madman to a dashing,misunderstood hero who only wants to kill Moby Dick after his fianceé(!) turns away from him after seeing his wooden leg.
He squints his eyes, widens them when angry, snarls all of his dialog in a theatrical manner, and then we're supposed to believe that a beautiful young girl (JOAN BENNETT at twenty) is so charmed by his dashing appearance that she falls instantly in love with him.The only impressive things about the film are the settings, the photography and the all too brief moments at sea where Captain Ahab comes into contact with the great white whale.
But for a film about Melville's famous whaler, it spends very little time at sea.
Most of the story is taken up by a conventional three-way romance that is pure Hollywood hokum.Bennett was a very beautiful young girl but there's a strange quality about the way she uses her voice--"talkies" being new, this is, I suppose, forgivable.
She seems to be acting in a stage play rather than a movie--but then, so is Barrymore.Summing up: Primitive attempt to present Melville to '30s audiences, leaving out most of the plot, substituting motivations and adding love interest.
It is thus an artifact rather than a movie to be taken seriously for its story or characters in terms of 21st century values.John Barrymore as can be plainly seen was primarily a stage actor, a bit long in the tooth by 1930 to be swashbuckling.
What is surprising is not how quaint and misguided this sort-of rendering of Moby Dick is, but rather how well-produced it is for a talkie.In fact, the production qualities are marginally quite good, and seem to get better as the story proceeds.
Moby Dick (1930) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Lloyd Bacon directs this take on the classic Moby Dick with John Barrymore playing the crazed Captain Ahab.
The rest of the film deals with a romance between Barrymore and Joan Bennett, which is downright boring and over dramatic.
***SPOILERS***   ***SPOILERS*** A relentlessly mugging John Barrymore plays Young Ahab Ceely (!) as poor Herman Melville spins without cessation in his lonely grave.
(No "awful whiteness" for this whale!) Fearing that Faith will reject him because of his wooden leg, he uses his brother ("Derek") as an intermediary; surprise, he lies to Ahab about her intentions (which were honorable, of course) and Ahab runs off to sea for another 3, 7 or 10 years (the chronology got a little mixed here).
Upon mistakenly landing at New Bedford (easy to get confused out there, I guess) the crew jumps ship (one of the better scenes in the movie) and Ahab snarls at Starbuck to Shanghai a new crew from the taverns and brothels.
They Are Pulling Your Leg. Necessarily ridiculous film version the literary classic "Moby Dick".
John Barrymore is Captain Ahab, who falls in love with the pastor's daughter, Joan Bennett.
When Mr. Barrymore loses his leg in a whaling accident, Bennett rejects him.
He must slay the whale and win Bennett back...There are several scenes which may have thrilled 1930 theater audiences; particularly the scenes involving Barrymore losing his leg.
The two name attractions, John Barrymore and Joan Bennett aren't at their best.
**** Moby Dick (8/14/30) Lloyd Bacon ~ John Barrymore, Joan Bennett, Lloyd Hughes.
Unfortunately, whilst hunting a white whale, named Moby Dick, Ahab loses his leg.
He returns to New Bedford, fearing that Faith will have no charity when she sees his disfigured body.NOTES: A re-make of The Sea Beast (1925), starring Barrymore as Ahab, opposite Dolores Costello and George O'Hara.
All the action and shipboard scenes are put across in a much more vigorous and imaginative style than the land-locked material with Joan Bennett, Lloyd Hughes and even John Barrymore.
When Barrymore is not closeted with Bennett, all his scenes are most dramatically composed and lit, with the director making such skilled use of music and sound effects, that the film, despite its age, looks fluidly modern.
No matter who directed it, Moby Dick is a stunning film, guaranteed to knock even the most blasé 2018 viewer right between the eyes.