Post by telegonus on Apr 19, 2019 8:06:38 GMT
I've come to like Gregory Peck's playing of Ahab in Moby Dick. The makeup wasn't so good, and he didn't seem quite right for the film, by which I mean as directed by John Huston. I don't think those two were a "good fit", director/actor-wise, and that this hurt the film generally.
Some fine work from the supporting players lifts the film in quality, yet the movie as a whole feels somehow uninspired to me. It needed bravura, and might have been better had it been made a bit earlier, as produced by David Selznick, larger than life style, with more epic sweep and a rousing musical score courtesy of Tiomkin or Rozsa.
As to other actors who might have been good Ahabs: earlier, another Lincoln-esque player, Raymond Massey (seriously). I think that Massey would have been up to it throughout the Thirties, Forties, maybe beyond (by the time of Huston's version, no). I can't see Charlton Heston ever being quite right for Ahab (good actor, with almost too much dignity as well as, alas, ego).
For a Val Lewton B horror riff on the Meville novel I can see Boris Karloff making a grand, terrifying Ahab, with the usual Lewton suspects working nicely in the smaller roles. A new title would be needed, of course; maybe I Walked With A Great White Whale.
Some fine work from the supporting players lifts the film in quality, yet the movie as a whole feels somehow uninspired to me. It needed bravura, and might have been better had it been made a bit earlier, as produced by David Selznick, larger than life style, with more epic sweep and a rousing musical score courtesy of Tiomkin or Rozsa.
As to other actors who might have been good Ahabs: earlier, another Lincoln-esque player, Raymond Massey (seriously). I think that Massey would have been up to it throughout the Thirties, Forties, maybe beyond (by the time of Huston's version, no). I can't see Charlton Heston ever being quite right for Ahab (good actor, with almost too much dignity as well as, alas, ego).
For a Val Lewton B horror riff on the Meville novel I can see Boris Karloff making a grand, terrifying Ahab, with the usual Lewton suspects working nicely in the smaller roles. A new title would be needed, of course; maybe I Walked With A Great White Whale.
