Melville and the Silver Screen
I recently visited the New Bedford Whaling Museum and was delighted to learn that the adjacent Mariners’ Home had a special exhibition on “Melville and the Silver Screen.” This couldn’t have been more relevant to my current Maritime Studies course, “The Last Great Hunt: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, and American Culture.” In addition to reading Moby-Dick we are exploring its in impact on music, film, and many other aspects of popular culture.
Melville stayed at the Mariners’ Home and attended services at the Seamen’s Bethel next door before shipping out from New Bedford on his first whaling voyage in 1841, on the whaler Acushnet. The Seamen’s Bethel is dramatized in Moby-Dick in chapters 7, 8, and 9. Here we meet Father Mapple, the clergyman who climbs a rope ladder to an elevated pulpit decorated with maritime paraphernalia and delivers his sermon from a lectern shaped like the bow of a ship. The subject of the sermon is Jonah, the biblical character who was swallowed by a whale when he attempted to evade responsibilities bestowed by God.
In the 1956 film adaptation of Moby-Dick directed by John Huston, the Mapple character is dramatically played by Orson Welles.
At the Silver Screen exhibit I learned that the original pulpit in the chapel was of a traditional style, not the massive ship’s prow depicted in Huston’s film. Many visitors were disappointed not to see the prow and in 1961 a new pulpit was commissioned to mimic the movie.
The 1956 film, starring Gregory Peck as Ahab and Richard Basehart as Ishmael, helped generate pride among New Bedford locals about their community’s role in whaling history, and contributed to renewed interest in historic preservation and tourism in the city.
On June 27, 1956, the film premiered in New Bedford with a parade of 35,000 people, the largest in the city’s history to that point.
Moby-Dick was first adapted for the silver screen in 1926. The Sea Beast was a silent film and commercial hit directed by Millard Webb and starring John Barrymore as Ahab. It was soon followed by a a sound remake in 1930, again starring Barrymore and this time directed by Lloyd Bacon.
The 1930 film has little do with the book; the screen writers managed to transform one of the most experimental and dramatic novels in the American literary cannon into a romantic screwball comedy. There’s no Ishmael; the plot hinges on the love story between Ahab and invented character Faith Mapple (played by Joan Bennett); and *spoiler alert* the film culminates with Ahab successfully slaying Moby Dick and winning Faith’s heart. Despite the ridiculous premise, I admit I found the movie entertaining.
I was interested to learn that Barrymore’s “rise to superstardom and subsequent decline is one of the legendary tragedies of Hollywood.” He was the most successful member of a famed theatrical family, a respected Shakespearean stage actor who was nicknamed “The Great Profile” for his Hollywood good looks. Unfortunately, Barrymore’s reputation declined due to his alcoholism. He became disruptive on set and “his last few films were broad and distasteful caricatures of himself.” In his final film — Playmates in 1941- he actually played an alcoholic Shakespearean actor named John Barrymore. The film was panned at the time, but to my contemporary ears it sound like an early version of Curb Your Enthusiasm or Louie, so I’m curious to check it out.
The 1956 film directed by John Huston is a more faithful adaptation of Moby-Dick. Huston was a Hollywood titan who wrote the screenplays for many classic films including The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), The Misfits (1961), Fat City (1972) and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). Huston invited famed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451) to write the screenplay with him. It was the only screenplay Bradbury wrote for a novel not written by himself. In the clip below Bradbury discusses the “eight hours of passionate, red-hot writing” in which he finished the script, proclaiming “ ‘I am Herman Melville!”
Huston and Bradbury’s version of the film captures the dark and melancholy atmosphere on the Pequod en route to its doom. Gregory Peck has some powerful scenes as Ahab, yet there is something one-note about his performance. The experimental nature of the text is lost, and Ishmael and Queequeg’s characters are muted in comparison to the book. The production is ambitious and succeeds on many fronts, but the results are ultimately unsatisfying. Of course this is just my take. The New York Times hailed the film as “one of the great motion pictures of our time.”
Is it possible for a film adaptation to do Moby-Dick justice? I’m skeptical, though many have tried — Wikipedia lists 16 movies based on the book! So go forth and check out the many manifestations of the white whale on the silver screen!
