‘Call Me Ishmael’ is the best and most remembered opening line in fiction and is done justice in this film at the outset.

The sermon in the chapel summarizes the entire story just prior to it being acted out.

Gregory Peck plays Captain Ahab to the hilt as a charismatic death cultist obsessed with the moral rot of fear, personified by Moby Dick, the great white killer whale. The awesome thing about Moby Dick is the picture of pure tribalism, vested in a shared pursuit, in a mutually sought deadly goal, as the multiracial crew seeks its quarry. The three harpoon boats are each steered by a fearless white lancer, and manned in the front by a skilled aboriginal hunter wielding harpoon, an Indian, an African lion hunter and a Polynesian: if you are a whale it’s like being the victim in an alien invasion movie, with each breed of savage little ape tasked to accomplish that portion of your destruction for which it is most suited.

There are more good lines in this movie than the last ten I’ve seen. From just five minutes here are some lines:

“A hard thing to stop killin’ when you been killin’ steady, Sir.”

“Tis an evil voyage.”

“He is twisting that which is holy into something dark and purposeless. He is a champion of darkness. Ahab’s red flag challenges the heavens.”

“Captains can’t break the law, they is the law.”

“The laugh is the best answer to all is strange in life.”

I don’t like the way the nighttime scenes are filmed, with that ghostly oval over the screen. But the stark setting, the violent intensity of the crew, and the moral tension keeps the story taut with dread.

“The sun is nailed to the sky like that gold doubloon is nailed to the mast.”

In the book Queequeg is my favorite character. But in the movie it has to be the Alabama Cabin boy, hunting a giant whale with a tambourine.