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, philosophical

Review:
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 .
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.
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.
It would be impossible to make a movie that came up to the standard of the novel "Moby-Dick", but this film does a fine job of capturing some of the most important themes, and of telling a selection of the key parts of the story in an interesting way.
Instead, John Huston's version concentrates on bringing out many of the complex internal and external conflicts of Captain Ahab, in sketching the crew members and their reactions to Ahab's monomania, and in portraying the atmosphere of frequent tedium, growing tension, and occasional dread aboard the 'Pequod'.Richard Basehart's mild, pleasant demeanor makes Ishmael an appropriate mirror for the events and characters on the ship.
On screen, there is much to Ahab that just does not come across, and Peck's performance has to be judged with that in mind.Leo Genn makes his scenes as Starbuck count, and several of the other crew members are portrayed well, albeit in much smaller parts.
Ahab & his quest for the White Whale have reached the status of a cultural icon, but this film was wonderful when it was released, remains wonderful today, and will I think stand the test of time well into the future.I'd heard that even Gregory Peck himself had been talked into believing that his performance was 'wooden', but that is hogwash.
This is probably Peck's greatest performance, and that's saying something."Moby Dick" takes us into two strange and unfamiliar worlds--that of the 19th-century whaler and its crew on a global hunt for whale oil on the high seas, and that of Captain Ahab's mind.
John Huston & Ray Bradbury put this together and managed to use a number of lines directly from the book in the sometimes odd vernacular of the period that gives certain scenes and dialogue such presence and authenticity.From the odd first spoken line in the film, the voice-over of Richard Basehart saying "Call me Ishmael", the brilliantly constructed initial scenes that brought us, the audience, down to the sea as they brought the young Ishmael to it, the wonderful scenes in The Spouter's Inn where Ishmael meets innkeeper Peter Coffin and some of the Pequod's crew, notably Stubb, who goodnaturedly challenges Ishmael's seagoing ambition and, when convinced that he is authentic, introduces him to the inn's customs and celebration.
Peck's Ahab is one of the most compelling and memorable characters ever portrayed on film, and the transformation of the crew to carry out Ahab's obsessive search for the White Whale even against their better judgement was wonderfully portrayed and is the singular most important element of the story & of this script.It is absurd to describe what happens in this film, and I will not.
If you have ever read the Herman Melville story of Moby Dick, then you will know how hard it must have been for John Huston to turn it into film.
Gotten Better 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.
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.
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..
Instead of trying to capture Herman Melville's actual brilliant leviathan sprawl (and who COULD succeed at this?)-- a novel jammed with fantastic,bigger than life characters, many events of great symbolic significance, not to mention barrels of whaling information-- he carves out the tale of Ahab and his obsession with the white whale.
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.
Some parts of the novel may seem wordy to viewers, but are important in conveying Melville's meaning, such as Father Mapple's sermon on man's obedience to God. If you have a short attention span, and only like action films that are short on substance, this movie is not for you.
He meets captain Ahab (Gregory Peck) who has a self-destructive obsession to hunt the white whale , Moby Dick .
Soon enough Ishmael aware about the great white whale who claimed the captain's leg and Ahab's determination to seek avenge on the beast that crippled and scarred him , no matter what the cost to himself , his crew or ship .This impressive adaptation based on Herman Melville's 1851 classic novel is vividly brought to screen .
It results to be one of the most thrilling and moving see sagas ever realized .It's remade in 1998 TV series by Franc Roddan with Patrick Stewart ,Henry Thomas , Bill Hunter and Gregory Peck who takes on the character of Jonah-and-the-whale sermonizing Father Mapple who in this classic adaptation was vividly played by Orson Welles .
In 1956, director John Huston passed up the opportunity to play the self-destructive Captain Ahab, and chose instead veteran actor Gregory Peck.
Gregory Peck gives a riveting portrayal of Captain Ahab, a man obsessed with hunting down the white whale, Moby Dick, who disfigured him years earlier.
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?
This film version by John Houston lasts a couple of hours and I think it works very good as a resume of Captain Ahab's revengeful chase of the white whale.
Don't get me wrong: the book is a classic and a very good one too but it is movies we're talking about here."Moby Dick" is a real good adventure film and Houston's direction is pretty accurate.
In the meantime he shows the different characters on board the "Pequod" such as the professional Mr. Starbuck, the second in command; the tough and at he same time friendly Mr. Stubb; the mysterious Queequegg with his body covered by tattoos; and Ishmael the newcomer in search for adventure.But the center of the whole thing is Captain Ahab with his leg ripped of by the white whale and living with the only purpose of taking revenge of the beast.
And so obsessed Ahab is that he finally passes his madness into his men too.Gregory Peck brings a fine performance as the tortured and insane Captain and he shows perfectly he has been a dead man long before his meeting at sea with Moby Dick.
Huston shows his skill here too.Watch this film if you missed it (don't go for that recent too long all computer TV version starring Patrick Stewart as Ahab); you'll sure enjoy it if you like high classic adventure with psychology in the characters too..
Bogie would be marvelous as the mad, obsessive Ahab, and Peck could bring off the dark, disturbed, unbalanced Queeg just right.Both are marvelous movies with terrific lead characters - but both stars are twenty years wrong in age.Get the DVDs and view both and see what you think..
Moby Dick (1956)Stunning low key color, remarkable special effects, a stern Gregory Peck as Ahab, and a cast of ruffians and odd characters from the world 'round.
If Gregory Peck at 38 was too young to play Ahab, the juvenile role of Ishmael should not have gone to 42 year old Richard Baseheart.
Equally as good as Peck is Richard Basehart as narrator Ishmael, who begins to question Ahab's modus operandi.All in all, "Moby Dick" is a tour-de-force in every way, and affirms John Huston as one of history's great directors.
A good effort by John Huston at adapting Herman Melville's classic tale of obsessed whaler captain Ahab.
Certainly entertaining enough,some excellent scenes, plenty of action, and a great climax.Leo Genn stands out as Starbuck, while Gregory Peck is just adequate as Ahab.
But its certainly on a par with the shark in 'Jaws', and no body complained about that.Moby Dick is one film I think would be really great for a big budget remake (Though I've not seen the recent TV movie).
Captain Ahab is a very complex figure, very demonic in his presence, a man who is bitter, angry and mad to his core, there were times in the book I was more frightened of Captain Ahab than Moby Dick himself, but Peck doesn't come close to reaching these character traits.
John Huston is one of the greatest American directors but "Moby Dick" is rarely mentioned among his most memorable works, even Gregory Peck wasn't fond of his performance as Captain Ahab.
I wonder how the film would have looked in black- and-white, especially one of such deep religious undertones and with a gallery of fascinatingly tormented characters.Indeed, Ahab, Ishamel, the story of Jonas are all familiar to Biblical readers but for average viewers, they carry the secret beneath Ahab's obsession with that white whale, something that borrows from centuries of a tormented relationship between men and the sea, an attitude torn between defiance to God, and temptation to greed and to hubris.
I can imagine the same film with the same look than "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", but then I'll be likely to extend my "what if" questioning and wonder if John Huston wouldn't have played the part of Ahab better.
And the gallery of supporting characters composing the crew is perhaps one of the best things about "Moby Dick".The story is told from the narrator's standpoint "Ishmael", played by Richard Baseheart who's the perfect foil for more colorful and memorable characters such as Harry Andrews as Stubb, Fiedrich Von Ledebur as the giant, goodhearted Native and first-class harpooner.
Huston always cared for characters who, while not succeeding, pushed their personal quest to their most extreme limits, a film like "Moby Dick" about the ultimate romantic collective failure, could only be directed by Huston, but needed a denser actor to direct the boat.So, while John Huston and Ray Bradbury's adapted screenplay and the special effects did justice to the story, it doesn't strike the sensitive chord you'd expect from Huston.
Moby Dick (1956) ** (out of 4) John Huston's adaptation of Melville's novel about whaling in the 1840s as Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck) heads out to the sea but soon loses focus and goes after the mysterious white whale known as Moby Dick.
John Huston's "Moby Dick" is one movie that I have personally always looked forward to seeing, but it's also one where I always read harsh and occasionally downright mean comments about.
Huston's Moby Dick is lovely to look at, brilliantly done in places, but it is not the great story that Melville's book is..
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.
Gregory Peck's portrayl of Ahab was so definitive that Patrick Stewart seemed to copy his moves and inflections in the recent TV remake.A great period movie although it could have been longer to capture more of Melville..
I never tried to watch another version, because I happen to be afraid of water, but I managed to sit through this one for the sake of Gregory Peck.Greg stars in this virtual one-man show, about a disgruntled, disfigured sea captain who seeks revenge on the whale who scarred him years ago.
Until today,June 2,2007 i had thought that a widescreen version of this film did not exist.I wondered if it was shot in widescreen by John Huston back in 1955 or 1956.Now, as i type this commentary, i am surprised to be watching this 1956 version of "MOBY DICK" in widescreen on Turner classic movies.
I hope that a new DVD is released of this movie, in this widescreen format.I have the full frame version on DVD,but widescreen is a must.In my opinion,it is this film or "12 O'Clock High" that Gregory Peck should have won the Oscar for best actor.Peck is certainly very good in "TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD" but he is dynamic in "MOBY DICK".He dominates the screen and is great as Captain Ahab-one of the great characters in novel history.John Huston's "MOBY DICK" is a wonderful adventure film aided by a terrific music film score.The film also has a great look about it and is a realistic looking period piece.Huston takes the meat of Melville's big novel and makes a top notch movie.P.S. once again- Kudos for Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab..
Gregory peck is simply someone who CAN'T make a bad film, and Moby Dick is one of his best!
I happen to have a good friend who is an English teacher and he advised me not to even try to read this ponderous book--though he also indicated there is a lot of religious allegory in the story that simply isn't in the movie.The film starts oddly, as the main character, Ishmael, enters a pub and talks with a very odd barman.
Sci-fi novelist Ray Bradbury was chosen by director John Huston to do the screenplay of Melville's Moby Dick, a book that Bradbury had little liking for.
None the less he came up with a top notch screen play with a fine cast of actors including Gregory Peck (who personally thought Huston should have played the part himself) James Robertson Justice, Richard Baseheart, Leo Genn and in a fine cameo Orson Welles as Father Mapple.
Beginning with an applause to the novel, mix of allegoric hints of Shakespearean, Greek tragicomedy and mythology of almost any religion or culture, I think this film is at the same time an amazing exposition of a very hard worked script, understandable and captivating for any kind of audience either being young (the adventures story of a group of sailors with spectacular images of the ship Pequod) or mature and old people (the desperation and frustration of a solitary man utterly obsessed with a symbol -the whale- that leads to compare him with the man who reveals against what could be taken as an omnipresent and infinitely powerful God, after being challenged by him in a life or death duel) ending with the magnificent (to me again, since not many people agree with that) performance of G.Peck and the classic J.Huston's direction.As a resume, a deathless masterpiece of the classic period of Hollywood..
I have read quite a few reviews that claim that Gregory Peck was miscast as Ahab in this version of Moby Dick and that he often looks ill at ease in the role.
I have never understood how anyone would see his casting or performance in this way.Throughout my life, I have loved reading sections of Moby Dick and I loved this film from the moment I saw Richard Basehart walk over the hill and in voice over invite me to "Call me (him) Ishmael." The screenplay is evidence of Ray Bradbury and John Huston's craftsmenship.
Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" is one of those many works of classic literature which "everyone" has read and I haven't, so unlike some of those who have posted here I am unable to compare the film with the original novel.
When the film first appeared in 1956 there was some criticism of the casting of Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab; he was not the first choice of director John Huston, but the studio insisted on a big-name star for the role.
Ishmael(Richard Baseheart)goes to sea seeking a new experience, he decides to ship with a whaling vessel,he soon finds himself on a journey far from routine, as Captain Ahab(Gregory Peck) makes his motives known, he has set sail for revenge on Moby Dick, the whale who left him maimed physically and mentally, persuading his crew to join with him in seeking his vengence, and all seem willing to follow, except for the first mate, Mr. Starbuck.(Leo Genn) this film is quite entertaining and believable, Gregory Peck sucks you in, and is beautifully filmed.
Of course there are book parts missing, but everything that it's important remains here, so you do understand the story only with the movie.All the supporting cast here does a nice job, but Gregory Peck is amazing on the role of Captain Ahab.
GREGORY PECK MADE THIS MOBY DICK A REAL CLASSIC FILM!.
The story of Captain Ahab and his constant quest to hunt and kill the great white whale, Moby Dick.A timeless tale on the irrationality, unproductiveness and futility of revenge.Gregory Peck is excellent as Captain Ahab, and shows that he can act the villain.
and it is not a surprise - the collaboration between John Huston and Ray Bradberry, the convincing Ahab by Gregory Peck, the inspired technical solutions to novel challenges makes the film not exactly a successful work but an admirable lesson of cinema, courage and admirable adaptation.
Captain Ahab(Peck, in one of his best performances) lost his leg to a great white whale, the legendary Moby Dick.