Moby Dick

Moby Dick is a 1956 American color film adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. It was directed by John Huston with a screenplay by Huston and Ray Bradbury. The film stars Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart and Leo Genn. The music score was written by Philip Sainton. Plot In 1841, a sailor named Ishmael arrives in the New England town of New Bedford, Massachusetts to find work on a whaling ship. Due to a shortage of local lodgings, he is forced to share his room at the inn with a Pacific Islander and harponeer named Queequeg, whom he befriends after a tense first meeting. The next morning, the two of them join the crew of Pequod under the command of Captain Ahab, who is obsessed with hunting and killing a legendary, white-skinned whale named Moby Dick, who was responsible for severing Ahab's left leg. Just before their departure, Ishmael and Queequeg encounter a man named Elijah, who delivers an ominous warning about Ahab and that all but one of the crew who follow him will find their deaths on this voyage. As the ship casts off, and for some time afterwards, Ahab remains unseen until he finally appears to align his crew to the hunt for Moby Dick and sets course for the Bikini Atoll, where the whale is said to dwell. While the crew reaps a fair bounty of oil on their journey, Ahab's obsession with Moby Dick remains foremost in his mind. When the captain of a passing ship, who recently lost his hand to the white whale, informs Ahab of Moby Dick's latest whereabouts near the coast of Madagascar, Ahab immediately breaks off a particularly successful hunt, unsettling his crew, particularly his chief mate Starbuck. Starbuck asks his fellow officers Stubb and Flask for help wresting command of the Pequod from Ahab, which the two refuse.