Moby Dick ** (1930, John Barrymore, Joan Bennett) – Classic Movie Review 12,692

Warner Bros’ 1930 black and white adventure film Moby Dick stars the richly entertaining John Barrymore and Joan Bennett, and is the first sound film of Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick.

‘Far out in an angry sea. sailors grapple with monster whales in a combat to death. While home in New Bedford sweethearts pray for the safe landing of boats that seldom return!

Director Lloyd Bacon’s 1930 Warner Bros black and white adventure film Moby Dick stars the richly entertaining John Barrymore and Joan Bennett, and is the first sound film of Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick.

Hollywood takes on Herman Melville and both lose in this early sound version that is more of a small red herring than a great white whale.

Nevertheless, John Barrymore, reprising his role in the earlier 1926 silent version The Sea Beast, is colourful as the one-legged Captain Ahab and clearly relishes the challenge of turning this great tale of doom and obsession into a love story. In his own extravagant way, he is much more entertaining than Gregory Peck in the 1956 John Huston remake Moby Dick. He certainly easily eclipses his co-stars.

It is not bad, though, to do all this in a fast-running 80 minutes. For all its faults, it’s rather enjoyable,

The film’s plot, derived from The Sea Beast rather than the novel, is actually pretty sturdy, though it is a silent movie plot, and the film is more of a remake of The Sea Beast than an adaptation of the novel. Ashore in New Bedford, Ahab meets and falls for Faith Mapple (Joan Bennett), the minister’s daughter, beloved of Ahab’s brother Derek (Lloyd Hughe). Faith returns Ahab’s love, as, sorry to say, especially as the beloved character name is rare in the movies, Derek is drab and ignoble.

Ahab then sets out to sea and loses a leg to the monstrous white whale Moby-Dick. Back in New Bedford he wrongly believes Faith would now reject him, and he returns to sea to kill the great white whale.

The cover of the first American edition of Moby-Dick.

So, it is a very free adaptation of Melville’s classic. Oliver H P Garrett adapts the novel and J Grubb Alexander writes the screenplay. They faced an uphill task. Melville’s book is quite a chunky, complex, digressive item, first published in three volumes as The Whale in London in October 1851. It took him 18 months to write, faced some hostile reviews, failed commercially, and was out of print when Melville died in 1891.

Joan Bennett took over the role of Ahab’s true love (here Faith Mapple) after Dolores Costello, who plays the true love Esther Wiscasset in the 1926 The Sea Beast, became pregnant at production time with her first child, Dolores Ethel Mae ‘DeeDee’ Barrymore. John Barrymore and Dolores Costello married in 1928, had two children, also including John Drew Barrymore, but divorced in 1934, partly because of Barrymore’s increasing alcoholism. Drew Barrymore is their grand-daughter.

The cast are John Barrymore as Captain Ahab Ceely, Joan Bennett as Faith Mapple, Lloyd Hughes as Derek Ceely, Noble Johnson as Queequeg, Nigel De Brulier as Elijah, Walter Long as Mr Stubbs, May Boley as Whale Oil Rosie, Tom O’Brien as Starbuck, John Ince as Reverend Mapple, Virginia Sale, William Walling and Jack Curtis.

Release date: September 30, 1930.

The film featured an early, experimental use of widescreen process Magnascope.

The cover of Melville’s novel is shown on screen, and then what is supposedly the first page of the novel, but the text shown consists of consists of statements about whaling in and about Moby Dick, written by the screenwriter.

The opening sequence is lifted from the silent version.

Michael Curtiz directed the German version Dämon des Meeres  at the same time. Ahab was played by Wilhelm (William) Dieterle.

Barrymore followed it up at Warner Bros with Svengali (1931) and The Mad Genius (1931), which proved his last at Warner Bros.

Moby Dick (1930) and Svengali (1931) and The Mad Genius (1931) were in litigation until April 1959 because of they were part of the estate of John Barrymore who had a financial interest in them when they were produced. It is recently showing on Turner Classic Movies.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,692

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