One of the jokes I remember being told by the old man I used to live with when I first met him goes like this: They call me Fishmeal.  If you know your classic American literature, or cinema, you will know this is a play on the opening line from Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby Dick.  Because The Legionnaire covers movies and not books, you are getting the 1956 film adaptation of Moby Dick.  Humor aside, there is a lot to get to in regards to a Catholic analysis of this motion picture, some of which will come out as I go through the synopsis.  I will also try not to linger too long on the obvious spiritual aspects.  Yes, this is a tale about God punishing man’s hubris, which will be plain from my rendering of the story, or if you watch it.  At any rate, cast about for your nautical vocabulary and onward to the review!

The Fishmeal mentioned a moment ago is Ishmael (Richard Basehart), and he is as yet unacquainted with Moby Dick.  It is that time of year, though, when sailors like him head back to sea, and he is on his way to New Bedford, Connecticut, to do so.  This year, instead of serving on a merchant vessel as he has previously done, he plans to sign on to the crew of a whaler.  He meets seasoned sea salts in a seaside inn (say that three times fast), and their gallows humor about hunting what they refer to as the leviathan only stoke his imagination.  He also plans on staying at the establishment until he is bound for the rolling main, and is assigned to share a bed (things were different in the nineteenth century) with a cannibal and hunter from Polynesia named Queequeg (Friedrich von Ledebur).  Queequeg is surprised to find a bedmate, but Ishmael is saved from the harpoon by the inn keeper.  From this point on, Queequeg devotes himself to Ishmael, telling the greenhorn that the Pacific Islander will go wherever Ishmael goes.  Where Ishmael goes is to the Pequod, the whaling ship captained by Ahab (Gregory Peck).  The owners of the boat initially want only Christians, but loosen their standards when they see Queequeg’s skill with the harpoon.  With many gathered on the wharf to see them off, the Pequod gets underway.  For the first few weeks on the ocean, the crew keeps to their duties and never see their leader.  The only evidence they have of him was hearing him pace the deck at night, his one footfall offset by the thump of his false leg carved from whale bone.  Captain Ahab’s furtiveness only adds to his mystique, if tinged with suspicion.  When he finally does emerge, it is to give the men a speech about his true purpose.  They are there to harvest the large sea mammals, but his main goal is to find and kill the great white whale known to many a veteran whaler as Moby Dick.  Following a ritual drinking from a common pitcher, he nails a gold doubloon to the mast, saying that the first person who spots the beast will be awarded the coin.  In private, Captain Ahab tells his incredulous first mate, Starbuck (Leo Genn), that he has been collecting anecdotes about sightings of Moby Dick, and has worked out when and where to intercept the sea creature as big as an island.  Along the way, though, they find many other more regular sized sperm whales and set to work with their deadly business.  This happens on Ishmael’s first watch for the animals, and he excitedly reports a pod hundreds strong.  In the middle of them quickly filling their tanks with the oil that is their raison d’etre, another ship happens upon the Pequod.  Captain Ahab confers with his opposite number and learns that Moby Dick has been spotted going in the direction he had predicted.  To the amazement of the crew, he orders them to cease their intake so they can commence the chase in earnest.  Once they get to Bikini Island, the place where Captain Ahab has determined he will meet Moby Dick, one of their lookouts falls into the water and disappears.  Immediately thereafter, the wind dies and they are becalmed for days.  As the crew slowly goes mad, Starbuck contemplates shooting Captain Ahab.  The first mate feels he would be justified based on the rules of their conduct, which state that their leader is to be replaced if he is negligent in his duty. Finally, even Captain Ahab has had enough waiting and tells the men to start pulling the ship with their launches.  In the midst of doing so, Moby Dick surfaces.  During this first encounter, Captain Ahab complains to God that he cannot kill his enemy without the wind.  A well-known spiritual saying, taken from Mathew 7:7, is ask and you shall receive.  In this case, the Pequod receives a major storm that tears away her sails as their supposedly god-like skipper pursues his revenge against the whale that, as he has put it, tore him body and soul.  Once they make it through the tempest, they hear the telltale sign that Moby Dick is near through the screeching of the seagulls that constantly circle above the monster.  With Captain Ahab sending the crew into a frenzy by promising his share of the profits from the voyage to whoever kills the whale, they take to their rowboats.  He is among the first to get a harpoon into the beast, though it shrugs it off.  The whale then turns and bites down on Captain Ahab’s boat.  The rest look on helplessly as he climbs upon Moby Dick, cursing and stabbing as he is dragged beneath the water.  He then resurfaces, his dead arm swaying as if beckoning on his men.  Remarkably, they all go after the enraged animal, including Starbuck, and all die in the process, except for Ishmael.  Once the launches are destroyed, Moby Dick rams the Pequod, sinking it.  The tale ends with Ishmael being picked up by another whaling vessel, having floated for a day on a coffin Queequeg had made for himself.

Ishmael had been told that only one person would survive the encounter with Moby Dick by a man in New Bedford calling himself Elijah (Royal Dano).  Elijah is one of the major prophets of the Bible and there is a connection with another person from Scripture: King Ahab Israel.  Before continuing, though, the last thing I will say on the topic of hubris is that it is summed up in the church scene before they go to sea.  In it, Father Mapple (Orson Welles), though not a Catholic priest (which would have been rare in New England in the early nineteenth century), tells the congregation about the book of Jonah, another prophet.  Briefly, Jonah was swallowed by a whale after the crew he was sailing with found out he had cursed God.  This is something that Captain Ahab frequently does, which leads me neatly back to the 1 Kings 17-19.  This is where you will find the interactions of the Scriptural men on which Melville and the film based their characters.  In these chapters, Elijah predicts doom for King Ahab.  You see?  Knowing your Bible can help you interpret cinema.  The reason for their enmity stems from the Israelite ruler leading the people away from the worshipping of the one true God.  As the Lord does so often throughout the Bible, He sends His prophets, like Elijah, to warn of the dangers of not adhering to the Covenant He made with His people.  This plays out in the film as Captain Ahab slowly turns the crew away from their given job to join him on his blasphemous quest.  That is not my description, by the way, but that of Starbuck, who pleads with his skipper that their duty is to keep harvesting regular whales and bring their products back to port.  The movie is quicker in demonstrating God’s wrath with the death and destruction visited on the crew of the Pequod.  In Scripture, King Ahab is only one of a line of monarchs that revoke their worship in favor of following other gods.  Only after centuries of affronts, and not even during King Ahab’s reign, does God allow for the fall of the Kingdom of Israel.  Yet, to demonstrate His mercy, He allowed a remnant to remain.  In this light, it is interesting that Ishmael should be the one to survive.  Scripturally speaking, he is the son of Abraham who, despite being the first born, is banished to the wilderness with his mother Hagar when Abraham’s wife Sarah gives birth to Isaac.  Still, it should be noted that God’s favor did not leave Ishmael, and a great people sprung from him, too.  There is no parallel for this with Moby Dick’s Ishmael, outside of them being evidence of God’s mercy.  He can bring us some of the most incredible trials we will ever face, but He is always with us, and that is always enough.

Ishmael is clearly challenged in Moby Dick, and it is little wonder that the novel remained so popular one hundred years later and was made it a major motion picture.  Be warned, however: it does contain shots of actual whale hunting, which is not ideal.  At the same time, there is no getting around the fact that it is history, and the story is based on real events.  It is also worth watching for the practical special effects of the day.  Hence, I recommend this one.