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From the Page to the Screen – Moby Dick

Moby-Dick is an iconic 1851 adventure novel by Herman Melville. It is considered to be the finest American novel of all time and it is instantly recognizable in pop culture, resulting in a couple of adaptations on the small and the big screen.

THE 1956 VERSION

The most famous film adaptation was released in 1956 and it received solid reviews, though it ended up being somewhat forgotten and largely underrated. It’s a solid adaptation that deserves more love and attention for sure.

PLOT

The approach of this movie is different than the novel. It is pretty much an adventure story and it is quite successful as one, though it obviously failed to explore the themes and the whales as much as the novel did. The movie is a much simpler tale for better and for worse.

WINNER – BOOK

CHARACTERIZATION

Gregory Peck wasn’t all that great in the role, but Captain Ahab was so well depicted and developed in the movie itself. He is the sole focus of the film, which resulted in terrible characterization for everybody else with Ishmael and Queequeg faring the worst. They were my favorite characters from the book, which is why this movie disappointed me.

WINNER – BOOK

EMOTION

The final pages of the novel were quite moving as you felt the passage of time and the epic nature of the story after reading it. The ending itself was very powerful. Although the ending in the movie was also solid, it failed to capture my heart as much as the book did.

WINNER – BOOK

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THEMES

Obviously, the novel takes this one. Moby-Dick doesn’t just explore obsession and revenge as the movie solely focused on, but it also deals with the impossibility to know everything as humans and just how mysterious and awe-inspiring nature is to us.

WINNER – BOOK

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

The washed up cinematography did nothing for me in this movie, though I appreciated it from an artistic standpoint, but the sound, score, costumes and attention to detail were all phenomenal. The book itself is diverse in genres and styles, but too verbose and difficult to comprehend at times.

WINNER – TIE

BOOK 5: FILM 1

Overall, this was a solid film adaptation that looked and sounded great, but it failed to capture the imagination and the heart as much as the novel did. The book itself is flawed, but it is so thematically rich and sophisticated that this movie simply couldn’t compete with it. But it was overall a pretty solid effort that deserves more attention from classic cinema fans.