Moby Dick

"I see a madman beget madmen," Starbuck declares as the chase after Moby Dick is nearing its end, and as Captain Ahab is firing the crew of the Pequod to a frenzy of excitement. The trouble is that Starbuck does not really see a madman. He sees Gregory Peck.

This is almost a great movie; Peck's portrayal of Ahab is virtually all that's wrong with it. The flaw is a considerable one, however, since an impassive, insipid Ahab robs Melville's story of its hottest fire and its deepest meaning. Peck is just utterly miscast. For one thing, he is too young, giving no impression whatever of having seen "forty years and one thousand lowerings" on whaling ships. His bland face has nothing of the torn, tortured, gnawed-at, fiery look that Ahab should have. Rather, as he paces the Pequod's deck, his long strides, suspenders, beard, and melancholy, almost soft, expression remind the viewer more of one of Ahab's prominent but quite contrasting contemporaries--Abe Lincoln.

Peck's failure to put any fire into Ahab impairs the movie in all sorts of ways. Melville's words suffer somewhat from the drawling, rather lazy articulation that the Captain gives them. There is also a certain loss of credibility, since Peck's businesslike exhortations to the crew could not conceivably move them to the state of excitement that director John Huston has them exhibit. More important, the movie's phlegmatic Ahab could never, never be the magnetic, crazed, God-challenging hero of Melville's book--the character on whom the essence of the novel's supernatural, symbolical, and philosophical meaning is based. With Peck as Ahab, Moby Dick becomes just another fish story.

Yet it is still one of the best sea tales ever written. Huston's movie may fail to capture the story's deepest meaning, but it does an admirable job of recreating Moby Dick both as a thrilling adventure story and as a portrayal of the whaling industry.

In adapting Melville's 500 pages into a not over-long screenplay, Huston and Ray Bradbury have done a job that is unqualifiedly brilliant. They have followed the plot and the characterizations faithfully, and have even shown a welcome respect for the spoken word--in the sermon by Father Mapple, in Ishmael's intermittent narration, and in numerous speeches by Ahab that are taken almost verbatim from the book. At the same time, realizing that the camera and the pen are by no means interchangeable storytellers, they have not hesitated to take beneficial liberties with the novel. In Peter Coffin's Inn they have inserted a drinking scene that instantly captures the character and spirit of the whaling men. Where Melville needed whole chapters to describe the processing of the whale's flesh--chapters which in most abridgments and adaptations are the first to go--Huston's camera in one shot imparts the atmosphere of the blubber works perfectly. In cases such as these, one picture really can be worth ten thousand words.

Many other aspects of the movie serve admirably to heighten the adventure and the atmosphere. The new color style, a blend of black and white with technicolor--is an ideal compromise between the prosaic and the lush. The musical score is appropriate. And Huston controls the dramatic pace effectively, starting slowly in the New Bedford scenes, mixing in increasingly explicit predictions of doom, and constantly quickening the tempo until at the end, in the storm scene and the final fight with Moby Dick, the action grips not just the Pequod's crew but the audience as well.

With the egregious exception of Peck, the acting is very good indeed. Richard Basehart gives Ishmael the appropriate detached air, and Leo Genn correctly looks torns between two duties as Starbuck, a sort of former-day Caine Mutineer. Friedrich Ledebur, as Queeqeug, is probably as good an authority as anyone on how a cannibal should act. And, oh yes!--the whale is great!