An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was directed by John Huston, I thought I might as well check it out. On top of that, I have to admit that I never read the classic written by Herman Melville (I probably should at some point) and it was pretty cool to finally get acquainted with this famous tale. However, to be honest, I actually had some trouble to really care about the damned thing though. I don’t know, maybe Huston’s approach was too straightforward, but, as far as I was concerned, it felt like a rather basic story after all. The funny thing is that I did enjoy Gregory Peck’s performance but, back then, many thought he was actually miscast (in fact, Peck himself seriously disliked his performance in this movie). Maybe it had to with the fact that, except for Ahab, none of the other characters was really interesting and it was mostly because they were all poorly developed. Concerning the action scenes, it must have been a really difficult shoot (in fact John Huston did admit that it was the most difficult movie he ever made) but, for a movie made more than 70 years ago, I thought the end-result was not bad at all. I also wonder if it was an inspiration for Steven Spielberg when he made ‘Jaws’ as he also had so many technical issues with his fake shark. In fact, Spielberg wanted to include a clip of this movie in ‘Jaws’ but Gregory Peck refused because he disliked so much what he did in this movie. Anyway, to conclude, even if I didn’t care much for it, it was still a decent watch and I guess it is worth look but, if you have the choice, you should probably read the book instead.