The Sea Beast (1926)

Directed by

Millard Webb

Genre

drama film, silent film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 16m

Rated

NR

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 7 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A vengeful whaling captain named Ahab leads his crew on a hunt for a giant white whale that took his leg. The story adds a romance with a woman named Esther and ends with Ahab surviving his encounter with the whale.

dramaticadventurousswashbucklingromanticepicsentimentalfast-pacedmelodramatic

What happens

The Sea Beast is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Millard Webb, starring John Barrymore, Dolores Costello and George O'Hara. The film was a major commercial success and one of the biggest pictures of 1926 becoming Warner Brothers' highest-grossing film. The Sea Beast is the first adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, a story about a monomaniacal hunt for a great white whale. However, the film alters the novel's plotline by establishing prequel and sequel elements that are not in the original story—such as the romancing of Esther and Ahab's safe return, respectively—and substitutes a happy ending for Melville's original tragic one. Some of the characters in the film do not appear in Melville's original novel. The film was so successful that in 1930 Warner Bros redid it in English and German, under the title Moby Dick, with Joan Bennett taking the role of Ahab's love because Dolores Costello was pregnant at the time. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Moby Dick (1956)
• Moby Dick (1930)
• Breed of the Sea (1926)
• Tentacles of the North (1926)
• Bride of the Storm (1926)
• Demon of the Sea (1931)
• Sea Horses (1926)
• Moby Dick (1978)