MOBY DICK (1930)

 

This month of April, the Turner Classic Movies network is holding a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Warner Bros. Studios. Every film that TCM will show this month will be one produced by the company, or at least released by it. 

As expected, most of the roster of films TCM has scheduled are among Warners' most famous--I don't even need to tell you the titles. But there are a few rare entries here and there. One of them is the very strange 1930 adaptation of MOBY DICK, with John Barrymore as Ahab. There's many reasons why I consider it very strange. One, it's an early sound film, and it has a sort of "in-between" quality--it probably would have worked much better as a silent feature. Two, it has very little to do with Herman Melville's famous work--it turns Ahab into a romantic hero, and it gives the story a happy ending!!

Actually the 1930 MOBY DICK is a sort of remake of 1926's THE SEA BEAST, which also starred Barrymore as Ahab. (I have not seen THE SEA BEAST--yet.) At the beginning of the film, a whaling ship pulls into the port town of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Among the sailors disembarking is a boisterous fellow named Ahab (John Barrymore). Ahab is a lively ladies man (!) who attracts the attention of young Faith (Joan Bennett), the prim daughter of the local parson. 

This is supposed to be a "younger" version of the future Captain Ahab. (Barrymore was almost 50 when this film was made, and he looks it.) Yes, this version of MOBY DICK gives Ahab a totally needless backstory--which proves that even over 90 years ago, Hollywood was doing this sort of thing. At this point in the story, Barrymore plays Ahab in a broad, comic manner. (While on shore, Ahab asks a pretty girl how old she is. She replies that she turns 18 next Tuesday, which prompts Ahab to say he'll see here next Wednesday.) To get the audience to like Ahab even more, he's given a relationship with a friendly dog (how can you mistrust a guy who likes a dog??). 

Why Joan Bennett's character--a beautiful, stately, innocent young woman--would be attracted to the brash Ahab is something one never figures out, unless she really goes for bad boys. (Bennett, by the way, would turn 20 the year this movie was released.) Not only does Bennett fall for Ahab, she promises to marry him, and wait around for him while he goes off on another whaling trip that could take years. (Where can I find a woman like that??) 

Ahab goes off, and the ship he's on encounters the legendary (and deadly) great white whale Moby Dick. While attempting to kill the beast, Ahab loses his right leg. He later returns to New Bedford a changed man, and when Faith sees him for the first time without a leg, she screams and runs away. Now Ahab truly goes over the bend. He wants nothing more to do with Faith (even though she tries to apologize), and he spends the next few years going around the world on his own, getting enough money to buy his own ship. Ahab intends to use the vessel to hunt down Moby Dick, and get his revenge on the animal. Meanwhile....Faith lives up to her name by still waiting around for Ahab to return. 

By this time Ahab has become absolutely obsessed, and he has to shanghai men to even form a crew. After fighting off mutinies and horrible weather, Moby Dick is finally sighted, and Ahab achieves his objective by personally killing the beast. Ahab returns to New Bedford to be happily reunited with Faith (and the dog). 

Not exactly Melville, is it??

I have to give the 1930 MOBY DICK credit for major audacity, at least. To take one of the most famous works of literature in the world, and change the plot in such a manner....of course, one could say that most Americans in 1930 didn't know much about the plot of MOBY DICK--heck, I doubt most people today know all that much about it. 

The 1930 MOBY DICK was obviously meant to be a vehicle for John Barrymore. Just the very idea of Barrymore as Captain Ahab gets the imagination flowing. It would have been great to see Barrymore in a proper, realistic version of MOBY DICK. In the last part of the 1930 version, he gets to play Ahab the way most people view the character--as a sullen, driven and dangerous man, obsessed on the great white whale beyond all else. The scene where Ahab finally kills Moby Dick is quite explicit for the time--as Barrymore, laughing maniacally, plunges his iron into the great beast, he's splattered with huge streams of the whale's blood. But after all the pain and anguish Ahab has put so many people (and himself) through, he's allowed to go back to New Bedford and marry a woman he's stayed away from for many years (and who still looks like she's 20 years old). 

What hurts the 1930 MOBY DICK even more is a ridiculous sub-plot involving Ahab's younger brother (Lloyd Hughes). The brother, who is named Derek (!), is a staid, respectable fellow, the antithesis of Ahab, and he also has an interest in Faith. In a wild plot contrivance, Derek gets shanghaied and placed on Ahab's ship, and he winds up trying to lead a mutiny against his brother. 

Lloyd Bacon directed this version of MOBY DICK, and while he tries to inject some early 1800s atmosphere into the proceedings, he can't overcome the weakness of the script. As I've mentioned before, this is an early sound film, and it's very creaky and disjointed at times. The sound quality is also mediocre at best--Ahab's ship goes through a major storm in the last part of the film, and due to all the wind and crashing water the dialogue is about impossible to make it. It also didn't help that the print of this film TCM showed was in bad shape (but that's probably due to the fact that was all they had to work with). 

The special effects are decent for the time, but Moby Dick is represented by what appears to be a bizarre-looking puppet mechanism. (Film historian Greg Mank has compared it to a giant suggestive-looking balloon.) It would have been a lot better if the great whale was barely shown, or portrayed as a shadowy, suggestive figure. But if you're going to make a version of MOBY DICK, the audience is going to want to see the whale. 

I have to give credit to TCM for showing a obscure movie like this during the Warner Bros. celebration--I get more excited seeing something like this for the first time instead of watching one of the studio's more famous classics for the umpteenth time again. (One other thing I must mention about the 1930 MOBY DICK--cult character actor Noble Johnson plays Queequeg, and he's way more interesting than Ahab's love interest or brother.). One thing the 1930 MOBY DICK proves is that the more things change in Hollywood, the more they stay the same. I intend to view Barrymore's other cinematic take on Ahab, the 1926 THE SEA BEAST, in the near future (it's available on YouTube), and yeah, I'll more than likely write a blog post about that as well. Doesn't that give you something to look forward to?