The film is John Huston's Moby Dick, with a rare screenplay by Ray Bradbury. It was a good try all around (I especially liked Richard Baseheart as Ishmael), but any adaptation of Melville is doomed to come up short onscreen, and this 1956 version is no exception. Still, it has a great Orson Welles cameo (as Father Mapple) in which he gives a stirring sermon on Jonah:
"Eternal delight will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath—O Father! Mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"
I wrote my senior thesis on Moby Dick. I think it's my favorite novel. As I delved into its truly mysterious nature, I had to admit that there really can't be any adaptation onto film (my favorite medium) that will capture its deep strangeness and complexity. I am at peace with that, because Moby Dick is a great novel. To separate it from its novel-hood is to lose most of its inherent nature. Which leads me to a favorite talking point: adaptations from one medium to the next can be truly successful, but they must necessarily be successful in completely different ways.
Good point, Cam. Most people have a hard time accepting this. To call a film a "faithful" adaptation is no longer a compliment, in my opinion.
I'm also a big admirer of Melville. Would it be a reduction to say that the novel is essentially about perception? Because that's pretty freaking hard to communicate through film.
4 comments:
Ha. This is the film where Orson should have played Ahab.
And Peck should have played Abe Lincoln!
The film is John Huston's Moby Dick, with a rare screenplay by Ray Bradbury. It was a good try all around (I especially liked Richard Baseheart as Ishmael), but any adaptation of Melville is doomed to come up short onscreen, and this 1956 version is no exception. Still, it has a great Orson Welles cameo (as Father Mapple) in which he gives a stirring sermon on Jonah:
"Eternal delight will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath—O Father! Mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"
I wrote my senior thesis on Moby Dick. I think it's my favorite novel. As I delved into its truly mysterious nature, I had to admit that there really can't be any adaptation onto film (my favorite medium) that will capture its deep strangeness and complexity. I am at peace with that, because Moby Dick is a great novel. To separate it from its novel-hood is to lose most of its inherent nature. Which leads me to a favorite talking point: adaptations from one medium to the next can be truly successful, but they must necessarily be successful in completely different ways.
Good point, Cam. Most people have a hard time accepting this. To call a film a "faithful" adaptation is no longer a compliment, in my opinion.
I'm also a big admirer of Melville. Would it be a reduction to say that the novel is essentially about perception? Because that's pretty freaking hard to communicate through film.
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