John Huston's MOBY DICK, from 1956, has been on my watchlist for considerably longer than 20 years; maybe I waited too long, for I found it disappointing -- though it is considerably better than the two other (later) movie versions of the story that I know of.
GregoryPeck gives it his all, but is unsuited to the part of Ahab. Maybe he was just too short on personal anger.
Meanwhile, the color scheme that Huston was so proud of that he took co-credit for at the start of the film, is no color scheme at all, but a visually dull, brown and gray mass of mud. It buries the story and especially the characterizations in turgid hues. Huston would have been better off to film it in a crisp black and white. As it is, the movie is plain ugly.
The whale confrontation at the end feels anti-climactic: in fact, the full-size prop wasn't working out. 90 percent of what we see on screen is miniatures, which give us the big picture but no sense of intimate struggle. We should have seen the whale's implacable eye, staring directly at the sailors; but we see it only once, isolated and mostly concealed behind waves and water and washed-out photography.
There's little to no compelling dramatic through-line. The script -- well, why employ a writer of Ray Bradbury's caliber just to make him a typist?
Maybe MOBY DICK is just unfilmable. It wouldn't be the only unfilmable book. Huston gave it a noble try, which has to count for something; but I take away points for his commissioning a real whale hunt and filming it.
GregoryPeck gives it his all, but is unsuited to the part of Ahab. Maybe he was just too short on personal anger.
Meanwhile, the color scheme that Huston was so proud of that he took co-credit for at the start of the film, is no color scheme at all, but a visually dull, brown and gray mass of mud. It buries the story and especially the characterizations in turgid hues. Huston would have been better off to film it in a crisp black and white. As it is, the movie is plain ugly.
The whale confrontation at the end feels anti-climactic: in fact, the full-size prop wasn't working out. 90 percent of what we see on screen is miniatures, which give us the big picture but no sense of intimate struggle. We should have seen the whale's implacable eye, staring directly at the sailors; but we see it only once, isolated and mostly concealed behind waves and water and washed-out photography.
There's little to no compelling dramatic through-line. The script -- well, why employ a writer of Ray Bradbury's caliber just to make him a typist?
Maybe MOBY DICK is just unfilmable. It wouldn't be the only unfilmable book. Huston gave it a noble try, which has to count for something; but I take away points for his commissioning a real whale hunt and filming it.
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