Moby Dick (1956)

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Movie
German title Moby Dick
Original title Moby Dick
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1956
length 116 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director John Huston
script Ray Bradbury
John Huston
production John Huston
music Philip Sainton
camera Oswald Morris
cut Russell Lloyd
occupation

Moby Dick is an American film by director John Huston based on the novel of the same name by Herman Melville in 1954 and premiered in 1956 . The script was written by Ray Bradbury and John Huston.

action

The action begins in New Bedford , New England , in 1841 and is told from the perspective of young Ishmael. Ishmael is looking for a job and decides to hire a sailor. He goes to New Bedford, also because the sea has always attracted him. In a hostel he meets the Polynesian harpooner Queequeg and they become friends. Although they are warned of this by the insane-looking Elias, Ismael and Queequeg hire the whaling ship “Pequod” in the port city. That Ahab, the captain of this ship, is on board is only conveyed to them in the first days at sea by the noises that his artificial leg makes on deck at night. Finally they see him. Ahab wears a prosthetic leg that was made from the jawbone of a sperm whale . This unusual material can be explained by the fact that the captain blames a white whale named Moby Dick for the loss of his leg.

In the course of the whaling expedition it becomes increasingly clear that Ahab sees its main purpose as being to kill Moby Dick. But that's not all: Ahab pursues this goal with such anger and obsession that the economic benefits of the expedition and human fate are becoming increasingly secondary. So he has the recovery of killed whales stopped because Moby Dick is said to be nearby. For the same reason, he later refuses to let the Pequod search for the castaways of another whaler, Rachel : an act of failure to provide assistance that inevitably leads to ostracism in seafaring circles, which Ahab does not care. "I would even attack the sun if it hurt me!" He states to himself.

Resistance to the delusional doings of Ahab only stirs with the level-headed first officer Starbuck, who soon realizes, however, that he cannot count on support. On the one hand, the other officers are against mutiny on principle; on the other hand, Ahab's charisma has a strong influence on the crew.

After the ship is caught in a severe storm, Ahab, who subordinates everything else to Moby Dick's pursuit, risks the ship's sinking. When Starbuck refuses an order and tries to cut a mast to save the ship, Ahab threatens him with death. Starbuck has to watch as the captain declares an Elmsfire apparition a promising sign for the hunt for the white whale, the crew harden freshly forged harpoons with blood donated especially for this purpose and Ahab has all the other crew members on his side with this blood oath. Starbuck himself decides to shoot Ahab, but then does not have the inner strength. Ahab tells him that their two fates are linked and does not take any punitive action.

A short time later there is an exchange of blows. Moby Dick appears and is pursued by whaling boats, but the whale destroys one boat after the other. Ahab succeeds in boarding the whale, but he gets caught in ropes on it and stabs Moby Dick with a harpoon as if madly. Ahab is pulled under the water by the whale. After surfacing again, Ahab is dead on Moby Dick's flank. His corpse makes an arm movement with which he appears to be waving to the crew members who are still alive. Starbuck is now insane himself and wants to pursue the whale. Moby Dick kills the crews in the row boats and swims towards the Pequod , rams her, and a toppling mast kills the cabin boy Pipp. The whale circles the ship and pulls it down in a gigantic vortex. The only survivor is Ismael, who is able to save himself on the coffin Queequeg had made for himself in anticipation of his own death. He is saved by Rachel .

History of origin

After spending more than a decade with his plan to bring Moby Dick to the screen, John Huston offered Ray Bradbury (author of The Mars Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 ) to work as a scriptwriter on this film production. Filming lasted more than three years and took place off the coast of Wales and the Canary Islands , among others . Numerous outdoor shots were particularly in demand because Huston wanted to deliver as many realistic-looking images as possible. At the filming location in the southern Irish port town of Youghal , the television antennas had to be dismantled from several houses in the city. Overall, however, the external shoots made up less than half of the finished film. The majority was shot in the Shepperton and Elstree studios in England.

Originally, John Huston had his father Walter Huston (including Oscar for a supporting role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , 1948) for the role of Ahab. For several years he then tried to make the film adaptation of Melville's novel palatable to a Hollywood studio. Because it is a rather dark subject with no female speaking roles and no love story, he did not initially find anyone interested. Eventually, John Huston was successful on the condition that a well-known actor play the role of Ahab. By then his father had passed away, and Gregory Peck was chosen .

Orson Welles , who portrays Pastor Mapple, played the latter in the 1955 TV production Moby Dick Rehearsed (with Christopher Lee , among others ), in which Welles also directed and played the lead role of Ahab.

For the white whale, a total of three more than thirty meters long dummies were made, which consisted of steel skeletons with a plastic skin. One dummy went under, and the tow lines of a second broke, which is why for a long time after the loss there was talk of a white ghost whale floating around in the Atlantic.

Moby Dick has a special status because of the color tone of his pictures. Huston wanted to provide images that recall the desaturated sepia tones of 19th century whaling stitches . For this purpose, Huston and his cameraman Oswald Morris developed a special process based on the Technicolor process. The result was grainier images in which the light appears roughened and slightly dirty.

reception

At the time, even before filming began, Huston was faced with doubts in two respects: On the one hand, Melville's novel, which describes the practice of whaling in an epic manner and is pervaded by numerous philosophical and mythological excursions, was not considered filmable. On the other hand, because the main role of Captain Ahab was occupied by an actor who seemed to be committed to the role model of the attractive, honest and slightly melancholy person of sympathy.

In fact, even after the film premiered, Gregory Peck has not been seen as the ideal cast by large parts of the audience and critics. It has been recognized that he portrayed a personality deformed by hatred passably, and the camera work did its part. However, his face, especially the softly formed mouth and the beard reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln , also exuded a certain gentleness that does not fit the role.

This "bad cast" was partly responsible for the fact that Moby Dick was not a great success at the box office at the time. Nevertheless, it is considered an outstanding work in film history today, mainly because of the special lighting and color mood with which the drawing of Ahab's character and the ominous plot of the plot are supported.

When the film was dubbed in Germany in 1956, the actor Hans Hinrich voiced the role of Orson Welles . The sailor Ismael, who tells the story from a first-person perspective, is spoken in German by Gert Günther Hoffmann .

The film was released in theaters in the Federal Republic of Germany on October 17, 1956, and it was first broadcast in Germany on June 20, 1971 at 9 p.m. on ARD .

In 1998 a remake of Moby Dick was produced for American television with Patrick Stewart as Captain Ahab. Gregory Peck made a guest appearance as Pastor Mapple in this remake. It was Peck's last role.

Reviews

  • Lexicon of international film : “Adventure film based on Hermann Melville's allegorical novel. Great visual art. "
  • Michael Denks, Zelluloid.de: “From today's perspective, this“ Moby Dick ”film is a captivatingly convincing odyssey, a mystical nightmare, not only for every seafarer. The effects were all successful and can still be seen today. "
  • In their review of the film, the New York Times praised the admirably faithful film adaptation by John Huston ( “admirably faithful to its source” ) and the camera work by Oswald Morris, which brilliantly accentuates the fateful desolation of the story ( “brilliantly underlines the foredoomed bleakness of the story " ).

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IMDB.com (Red.): Moby Dick Rehearsed (1955) , accessed 2015-0615-2150.
  2. ^ Filmdienst.de and Spiegel.de .
  3. ↑ Moby Dick. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ^ Moby Dick (1956) . In: New York Times , July 5, 1956. Retrieved October 17, 2013