Moby Dick

Moby Dick, the movie.

My grandma Ada had a summer house in South Dartmouth, Mass., and I used to go to the New Bedford whaling museum.  In the 1800’s, New Bedford was the capital of the New England whaling industry – with Nantucket and Provincetown close behind – and the whaling museum is terrific.  Their main draw is a half-scale model of a whaling ship, indoors, that kids or grown-ups can clamber all over and in. 

The world premiere of John Huston’s 1956 movie of Moby Dick was in New Bedford, in June, and my dad scored us tickets.  It was a big deal, both for him and me, and for New Bedford, which never really recovered after the boom days of whaling were over.  Looking up the event, all these years later, it turns out the picture premiered at three downtown theaters simultaneously, and Gregory Peck showed up at all three.  I remember him, vaguely, and I’m sure we bought the souvenir program, but I don’t remember the movie itself making that big an impression.  

It wasn’t, in fact, a huge hit.  I think it made its money back, but that’s about it.  The reviews were lukewarm.  Peck took the biggest beating.  He was too young for the part, and he didn’t have the chops, but more than that, he was Greg Peck, he wasn’t supposed to play some looney tunes with a peg leg.  (That would be Robert Newton.)

Huston cast Orson Welles as Father Mapple, in a cameo.  Andrew Sarris remarked that Huston should have hired Welles to direct, and played Ahab himself.  There’s a certain poetry in this.  Huston’s clear first choice for the part would have been Walter Huston, his father, but his dad was now dead.  Welles went on to do a very interesting stage adaption, where he played Ahab - I saw a later production of the play with Rod Steiger, and trust me, no scenery went unchewed. 

Going back and watching the movie now, though, I have to say it’s unfairly maligned.  Ray Bradbury did the screenplay, with Huston, and it’s very judicious – they emphasize the spectacle, and lean only lightly on the Old Testament aspects.  Peck is actually not embarrassing as Ahab; he’s pretty good.  John Wayne as Genghis Khan it ain’t.  Richard Basehart is wrong for Ishmael, let’s admit, and Woody Strode was going to be the harpooner Queequeg, but had a scheduling conflict.  Leo Genn gets a lot of mileage out of Starbuck, the sympathetic First Mate.  In the long run, what Huston does with the casting is to use faces.  You probably didn’t know then who Harry Andrews or Bernard Miles or Noel Purcell or Mervyn Johns were, but you knew a great face when you saw one.

You get a careful choice of detail.  The movie shows the doldrums, when the wind dies and the sails flap idly, the ship in irons.  You see routine, both the boring and the terrifying: a spooky scene with St. Elmo’s Fire playing through the yardarms, a Nantucket sleigh ride, the harpooned whale dragging a longboat.  There’s a strong sense of how the ship functions, as a mechanism, or a community.  Bluntly, everything In the Heart of the Sea got wrong, this picture gets right. 

One particular thing of note, the cinematography, by Oswald Morris.  You can look this guy up.  He did eight pictures with Huston, Moby Dick was the third.  He worked with Carol Reed and Tony Richardson and Sidney Lumet.  Very much a pro.  But they used a special process, famously, with Moby Dick.  They shot the picture, and desaturated the images.  This is something that’s gotten more common nowadays, because you can do it post-production.  If you’ve seen John Boorman’s The General, for example, the picture loses more and more color as Brendan Gleeson loses more and more of his moral center; at the end it’s black-and-white.  Band of Brothers uses a similar technique: the combat footage has little or no color.  Moby Dick isn’t digitally manipulated.  They apparently printed a black-and-white negative over a color separation, and the result is similar to looking at a hand-tinted illustration, of the period.

So, something perhaps to revisit.  A lot of times we go back, and suffer disappointment.  It’s nice to go back, and be pleasantly surprised. 

Move Over, Capt. Ahab

The idea for my column today came from two things that happened recently. First, I bought a book at a Books-A-Million last Saturday during a lull at one of my signings there (I know, I know, I'm supposed to be selling my own wares at these events, not buying the books of others--what can I say?). Second, I read with great interest Art Taylor's SleuthSayers column a week ago Friday, in which he talked about some of the differences between (and differences in attitude toward) reading fiction and nonfiction.

The book I bought was called In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick, which has been adapted into a new movie of the same name, directed by Ron Howard. I've not yet seen the movie--but I know the book is good because I just finished reading it. And the only thing unusual about the fact that I bought and read it in the first place is that it's a true story.

I do seek out and read nonfiction from time to time, notably Seabiscuit, The Perfect Storm, Into Thin Air, Unbreakable, The Right Stuff, In Cold Blood, etc.--but I confess that 99% of what I read (and write) is fiction. The reason for that is simple: I see and hear about reality all the time, especially in the morning paper or on the Nightly News, and when I read a book for pleasure I don't want reality. I want to be entertained. I don't want to be educated or illuminated--if that happens as a byproduct, fine, but first and foremost I'm looking for suspense and emotion and entertainment.

Here's my point: some nonfiction, especially that which falls into the delightful category of creative nonfiction, IS entertaining. That's certainly the case with Philbrick's book. Just as an author would do in a good novel, Nathaniel Philbrick introduces the characters (with all their flaws), puts them in a dire situation, makes their predicament even worse (and worse, and worse), and finally brings the story to a conclusion that's satisfying to the reader.

The icing on the cake is that the reader learns something about life as well as something about two things unfamiliar to most of us: (1) the legendary whaling capital of long-ago Nantucket, Massachusetts, and (2) the fascinating process by which daring men with tiny boats and large harpoons hunted and killed and butchered and boiled (to extract the oil from) leviathans measuring eighty feet in length and weighing sixty tons.

I won't give away any plot goodies here, but I will say that this is the true story of the officers and crew of the Nantucket whaleship Essex, which in 1819 was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale two thousand miles off the west coast of South America. And, ultimately, an engrossing story of courage and leadership and survival. The Essex tragedy served as a young Herman Melville's inspiration for Moby Dick, which was published 32 years later, and--according to Philbrick--was as familiar a story to nineteenth-century schoolchildren as the sinking of the Titanic was a hundred years later.

As for the movie, it opened on December 11 to mixed reviews, but I still look forward to seeing it. One reason is that I'm a fan of Ron Howard's films (Ransom, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Backdraft, Splash, Cocoon, etc.), and another is that I want to find out how these characters and the action that thrilled me in the book will look on the big screen. Besides, what other good movies are out there or coming up for me to see right now? The newest Star Wars? The newest Hunger Games? Spotlight? Bridge of Spies? Spectre? The Hateful Eight? Revenant? (Okay, you're right--I want to watch all of those too.)

Have any of you seen In the Heart of the Sea? Would its classification as nonfiction deter you from reading the book? In other words, does the fact that it was a real occurrence matter ro you? I've already admitted a personal preference for fiction over non-, but I've also said I enjoyed this tale. I'm not sure the reading process would've been any more fun if it had been fiction. Maybe it wouldn't have been as much fun. Maybe it actually helped to know that such amazing things really did happen.

I realize I'm resurrecting a subject that Art has already covered eight days ago, but I must ask: what are your feelings regarding fiction vs. nonfiction, in general? Are you as biased as I am? What are some nonfiction books you've read that you feel are as good or better than well-known novels you've read? Any recommendations?

Bottom line is, if you feel so inclined, check out In the Heart of the Sea. Nathaniel Philbrick did a fine job with that book, and I suspect that good old Opie created a fine movie from it as well. Sheriff Taylor would've been proud.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to novels and shorts. Can't stay away from fiction for long.