Review – Moby Dick (1956)

John Houston and Herman Melville were meant to be together. The director’s love of emoting and speechifying is tailor-made for the author’s grandiose, obsessive allegory of good and evil. Screenwriter Ray Bradbury does a fairly effective job of condensing the whale-sized novel down to a manageable two hours or so. Some of the whaling sequences make for difficult viewing, but at least they’re actually integral to the plot. My only real gripe here is that the technical aspects of the production are prosaic. More creative camerawork in particular would have been a real asset. Overall I suspect one needs to be in the proper state of mind before taking this on, but if the itch hits you then this will do a fine job of scratching it. Mildly amusing