Moby Dick
All actors and roles (10)
All team (21)
Short description
In 1841, a young sailor named Ishmael joins the crew of the Pequod, a whaling ship leaving New Bedford. Only after the vessel is at sea does it become clear that this is no ordinary voyage. The captain, Ahab, lost a leg to a great white whale called Moby Dick and has returned to the water determined to hunt the creature down. Ishmael and the rest of the men find themselves bound to a commander whose pursuit of the whale overrides every other concern.
John Huston directed and co-wrote the film with Ray Bradbury, adapting Herman Melville's novel. It was the eighth of the twenty-two features Huston directed in chronological order, coming after Beat the Devil and before The Unforgiven, and he also produced it. Gregory Peck plays Ahab, with Richard Basehart as Ishmael, Leo Genn as Starbuck, James Robertson Justice as Captain Boomer, Harry Andrews as Stubb and Bernard Miles as the Manxman.
The production had a budget of about five million dollars and took roughly twice that at the worldwide box office. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.3 from around 24,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7.1 from 488 votes. A critics' rating of 7.2 from 26 reviews places it close to how general audiences have received it. The film runs 115 minutes.
What's left behind the scenes
- Two 25-meter models with steel frames and rubber shells were constructed for the scenes with Moby Dick. Both models, costing approximately $30,000 each, were lost at sea during filming. A third had to be ordered for filming on the Canary Islands. At one point during filming, the cable holding the model in place snapped, and it began to drift out to sea with Gregory Peck (1916-2003) on it.
- When Starbuck enters the captain's cabin and tells him it's time to sleep, Ahab replies that his bed is his grave. Sailors slept in hammocks, in which they were also buried, as if in shrouds. Officers had berths resembling boxes. In the event of their death, they were also laid in the berth, and the body was thrown overboard.
- Orson Welles (1915-1985) was terribly nervous during the filming of the sermon. To help the actor calm down, director John Huston hid a bottle of brandy on set, told Welles where it was, and allowed him to take sips – strictly for medical purposes.
- At one point, John Huston (1906-1987) insisted on filming aboard a ship in open water. The sea became rough, and all members of the film crew and actors were struck with seasickness. Filming had to be interrupted until people recovered, which led to overspending on the film. A debt of $4.5 million still remains with the film's creators.
- The world’s largest coffeehouse chain, Starbucks, borrowed its name from Starbuck, the first mate of the whaling ship Pequod.
- Subsequently, many participants in the filming process, including John Huston and Gregory Peck, recounted that between one and three (accounts vary) whale models were lost during filming. From these stories, it was concluded that enormous whale models had indeed been constructed in the visual effects department, however, things were not as they seemed. According to Oswald Morris’s autobiographical book, during filming near the “Pequod,” a barge was located with mock-ups of whale body parts (hump, tail, etc.). These were filmed when needed. As for the shots showing the whale in its entirety, these were shots of smaller-scale mock-ups and were filmed in a special pool in a pavilion at the Shepperton studio. According to Morris’s recollections, the only thing lost during filming in the open sea was a 6-meter mock-up of the mid-torso, and Morris does not claim that Peck was on the mock-up at the time and had to be urgently rescued.
- To reduce color saturation in the frame, cinematographer Oswald Morris (1915-2014) filmed through black-and-white filters enhanced with a silver alloy.
- Gregory Peck refused the use of a stunt double and injured his knee during filming. Richard Basehart broke his leg, and Leo Genn contracted pneumonia.
- There are a few shots in the film that show Moby Dick in its entirety. However, for the most part, the camera focuses on individual parts of the animal's body (the mouth, eye, etc.). These shots were supervised by production designer Stephen B. Grimes (1927-1988).
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