MOBY DICK (1930)

This movie is about a sea captain wanting revenge against a giant white whale that bit off his leg. But in its specifics, this has little in common with the Herman Melville novel from which it takes its title. Almost every other detail is from the minds of the scriptwriters and not from Melville. The film is apparently based more directly on a 1926 silent film called The Sea Beast. Ahab Creeley (John Barrymore) arrives at a whaling port on a ship that has been out to sea for a couple of years. Faith (Joan Collins), a pastor's daughter, is waiting for him on the dock, spellbound by his showboating antics on the mast (he still has both legs). She is dating, in a rather lackluster fashion, Ahab's more handsome but less adventurous brother Derek (Lloyd Hughes), but Ahab quickly shows him up with his smirky but sweet bad boy ways. Just before he leaves for three years on a whaling ship, Faith agrees to marry him on his return. While at sea on the trail of the giant whale Moby Dick, in a well-shot though not explicit scene, the whale chomps off his leg. When he returns home, he's no longer climbing the mast but limps off the boat with a peg leg. Faith reacts badly at first, and Derek hopes to win Faith back. Ahab raises money to buy his own ship and heads out to kill the whale. He gets a crew made up mostly of drunken men shanghaied from a bar, including, unwittingly, brother Derek. At sea, the tattooed heathen Queequeg tells Ahab that his gods have predicted they will find the whale "when the sky and sea meet." When Ahab sees a huge water spout, he thinks the prediction has come true and he heads out to get Moby Dick. 

[Spoilers:] Against all expectations of anyone familiar in any way with the original book, Ahab gets a happy ending. He harpoons the whale, the men kill it and harvest its blubber, and Ahab goes home to marry the happily-waiting Faith. As a standalone sea adventure story, this is OK. Barrymore makes for a fairly appealing Ahab, though Collins seems way too goody-goody to fall for such a roughneck. Lloyd Hughes is fine as Derek, a nice guy in the beginning but changed by jealousy. On the ship, he tries to kill Ahab, but Ahab smacks him around and Derek ends with his back broken. It wasn't clear to me if Derek survives or not, but we don't see him back on land in the final scene. Noble Johnson, the chief on Skull Island in King Kong, is Queequeg. For an early sound movie, it's carried off pretty well with the ship scenes, especially one in a storm, feeling authentic enough. Many modern viewers will be quite surprised that there is no character named Ishmael, though there is a Starbuck somewhere on deck. I am not and will never be a big fan of Barrymore's; he always exaggerates his characters, and here, though he tries to be tender in his scenes with Collins, it never felt real to me. Still, almost as a novelty, this is OK. [DVD]