DVD : Moby Dick
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: PECK,GREGORY
EAN: 9780792850144
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 0792850149
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: June 19, 2001
Running Time: 116 minutes
Sales Rank: 4580
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: June 27, 1956
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The sole survivor of a lost whaling ship relates the tale of his captains self-destructive obsession to hunt the white whale moby dick. Studio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Date: 08/20/2002 Starring: Gregory Peck Leo Genn Run time: 115 minutes Rating: Nr Director: John Huston
Amazon.com essential video:
There are so many things right about this 1956 production of Moby Dick, it's a shame it is remembered for the one (debatable) thing wrong with it. As Captain Ahab, the bearded, one-legged, insanely obsessed whaler, Gregory Peck has often been called miscast. The mild, level-headed Peck had many talents, but the volcanic eruptions of Ahab seemed beyond him--even Peck himself felt he was a bad fit for the part after he finished playing it. (Pauline Kael opined that Peck looked like "a stock-company Lincoln.") Yet Peck's quiet brooding works an intriguing variation on the fiery character. John Huston, a director with a taste for location shooting, had his hands full with the difficult open-water filming in Ireland and the Canary Islands ("The catalogue of misadventures was unbelievable," he later wrote). Since Ahab is chasing the rare white whale, three false whales had to be constructed, two of which were lost at sea. For all the miscues, the film is amazingly controlled, and especially beautiful to look at: Huston and cinematographer Oswald Morris developed an unusual color process meant to suggest old whaling engravings. The director wrote the script with the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, an inspired choice to adapt Herman Melville's epic novel. Richard Basehart plays the narrator, Ishmael, and Orson Welles provides a wonderful single-scene role as Father Mapple, declaiming the mysteries of the sailor's life in a thundering sermon. --Robert Horton
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This a great American classic and I still prefer this version to the one with Patrick Stewart from the mid 1990's. I will enjoy it for years to come.
Rating: -
Released in '56, `Moby Dick' is one of the film classics of the fifties. Surprisingly the film quality is rather drab at times with the appearance of old newsreel footage. This is generally the case with the shots aboard the Pequot showing billowing sails or the ship from a distance. Yet at other times it's quite artistic and mesmerizing such as; the close-up portrait cameos of the old women standing on the dock, or the brooding sermon delivered by Orson Welles at the beginning.
However there are two things that raise this film to a higher, mythic level. Those two things are the magnificent performance by Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab and of course the white whale. Peck delivers a signature performance as the obsessive and defiant sea captain willing to forfeit not only his life but his soul for one more opportunity to slay the great white solitary that haunts his thoughts and dreams.
Ahh..., and then there's the whale. Moby Dick is haunting, frightening and irresistible. He's gigantic, remote and seemingly unaware with the activities of Ahab and his crew thus symbolizing all the aspects of a divinity unconcerned with its creation. It's truly a cosmic confrontation between the sacred and the profane, immortality and mortality, God and Lucifer.
`Moby Dick' is a film that entertains on so many levels. It's a worthy addition to any personal DVD library.
Rating:  -
The 1956 version of Moby Dick is one of those nostalgic pieces of film, that sci-fi fans probably rent just to laugh at the special effects, and they would definitely not be disappointed. The action sequences with the whales were flat-out terrible, they were very drawn out and seemed to play off a loop-feed, where you would see the whale rise and descend the exact same way over and over again, until you were seasick yourself. Aside from that, the dialogue and action on the ship were not bad, but the camera was almost entirely consumed with Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck) who did a fine job, in spite of going a bit overboard and breaking into Shakespearean soliloquies which were so wooden and long-winded, it left one wondering how long he could keep it up without bursting out in laughter. The final scenes with Moby Dick were as ridiculous as the rest of the whale scenes but demonstrated Ahab's amazing dexterity in riding atop the whale while it dove under and jumped across the ocean!
If you have time, skip the film and read the book. Melville is too gifted a writer to substitute such a poor rendition, and his works are filled with too much rich detail and satire for a film to encompass.
Rating: -
Many of the problems of this production relate to the attempt to compress a cadenced epic into 2 hours. That is to say they are understandable and forgivable. But it also has some gratuitous changes that radically alter major themes in the book and I would say create a more modern sensibility. Hardcore Moby Dick fans and originalists should be aware of this going in, or they will likely spout blood and turn belly up.
The first and foremost of these changes was the decision to jettison Ahab's demonic boat crew, headed by Zoroastrian Fedallah. Ahab's smuggling a private boat crew on board is part and parcel of his blasphemous megalomania and shutting off from the ship of society. Likewise Fedallah's hubris-inspiring oracles are also the portal through which the familiar ancient greek tragedy structure is conveyed into the book, and the primary vehicle by which the supernatural is kept near at hand. But this is all eliminated, while room is made for a 2 minute musical number at the Spouter Inn. If this were a decision of filmmaking convenience, it would be unforgivable. By the end, it's pretty clear that something else is going on. Ahab's blasphemy and hubris is deliberately muted throughout, and the entire production is deliberately less supernatural.
I think you have to jump to the altered ending to really get the gist of what was going on here. In this movie ending, instead of dead Fedallah lashed to the whale, we have dead Ahab, caught up in his own ... Read More
Rating:  -
I have read Melville's novel several times, it's a favorite of mine. I saw this film 20-30 years ago, and just received it on DVD, hoping I was wrong then: that this movie was a disaster, to the book, to movies.
I was unfortunately hoping in vain. It's the ultimate disaster. The dialogue tells the pictures, the pictures tells the dialogue, the music (horrible and horribly used) tells the dialogue and the pictures, and backwards ... it goes on and on. Unbelievable that for instance Kurosawa about the same time shot Seven Samurai.
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starring: Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn, James Robertson Justice, Harry Andrews
directed by: John Huston
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: PECK,GREGORY
EAN: 9780792850144
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 0792850149
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: June 19, 2001
Running Time: 116 minutes
Sales Rank: 4580
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: June 27, 1956
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