Moby Dick: Movie, 1956, color
Based on the novel by Herman Melville
Screenplay by Ray Bradbury
Directed by John Huston

Starring as Captain Ahab: Gregory Peck
Leo Genn as Starbuck, First Mate
Richard Basehart as Ishmael as sailor

This is one of my favorite movies, I watch it every time it comes on TCM.
Richard Basehart plays Ishmael, a landlubber who signs up as a sailor aboard the Pequod, a Quaker owned ship that plys the oceans looking for sperm whales, whose fine oil is essential for lamps and other uses in the 1800's.
As Ishmael and Queepqueg the harpooneer walk toward the Pequod, a raggedy barefoot man appears and warns them "One day ye will smell land where there be none, and on that day Ahab will go to his grave but will rise again and beckon the crew to go with him-- and all shall perish--all save one." Puzzled, Ishmael asks the man "what is thy name?" And the man replies "Elijah." (The name of a prophet in the Bible.)

One of my favorite scenes is the ship pulling away from shore out to sea, and the sailors singing a sea chanty as they unfurl the sails. On the pier, a silent bevy of women, mostly older women, widows, mothers, sisters, wives wave one last time as the ship heads out to sea, carrying their men who will be gone for three years.



Out to sea, the sailors soon find that Ahab is a madman with a peg leg made of whalebone, whose sole quest is to find Moby Dick, the great white whale that has scarred his body, taken his leg, twisted his soul and left Ahab obsessed with retribution. He risks his life, the crew's lives, and the ship in his search for Moby Dick.

"I see a madman beget more madmen" says Mr. Starbuck, the first mate. He attempted but could not bring himself to pull the trigger on Ahab to save the ship and crew. Ahab tells him "Our fates were bound together before time began, you and I."

Moby Dick is found and harpooned, Ahab getting caught up in the ropes as he got upon Moby Dick in the sea to stab him, and was drowned. The crew were all lost --all save one--as Moby Dick rammed the ship and sent it to the depths in a whirlpool. Only Ishmael survived, by holding onto a tarred coffin made for Queepqueg.

Upon its release this movie was a dismal failure. I don't know why--it is superb.

susil