Moby Dick
- NOT RATED
- Year:
- 1956
- 116 min
- 6,095 Views
Call me Ishmael.
Some years ago,
having little or no money...
and see the oceans of the world.
Whenever I get grim and spleenful...
whenever I feel like
knocking people 's hats off in the street...
whenever it's a damp,
drizzly November in my soul...
I know that it's high time
to get to sea again.
Choose any path you please...
and ten to one,
it carries you down to water.
There 's a magic in water
that draws all men away from the land...
Leads them over the hills down creeks,
and streams, and rivers to the sea.
The sea...
where each man, as in a mirror,
finds himself.
And so it was
I duly arrived at the town of New Bedford...
on a stormy Saturday late in the year 184 1.
-Rum.
-Rum it is. What mark?
To this a penny, to that another penny,
and so on to the top of the glass.
The Cape Horn measure, which
you may drink down for a full shilling.
The penny mark. Nay, the full shilling.
You'll be wanting a room tonight.
You ain't no objections to sharing
a harpooneer's bed with him, have you?
-You going whaling?
-That is my intention.
You need permission. You weren't born
and bred in New Bedford, were you?
No, I'm a stranger here.
-Then you'll have to have permission.
-Permission?
Aye. From us, the men of New Bedford.
The sea is ours.
Other seamen only have
And the whale is ours. Ours alone.
No one else may hunt it down and kill it,
unless we say so.
Do you dispute that?
-I do not.
-Good.
Then you have our permission
to sail our sea.
Drink to this boy, mates?
Big whales to you, mate!
Can whales do that?
Why, bless me, whales can do anything!
A whale can jump up like an earthquake...
and come down on you like
a mountain that's somehow put to sea.
of the biggest ships...
swallow whole crews,
pick its teeth with the oars.
Mind, lad, if God ever wanted to be a fish,
he'd be a whale.
Believe that, he'd be a whale.
Ahab.
Who's Ahab?
Captain Ahab to you.
-Who's Captain Ahab?
-Aye.
Ahab's Ahab.
Music.
In Amsterdam there lived a maid
And she was mistress of her trade
I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid
A-roving, a-roving
Sing!
Since roving's been my ruin
I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid
Her cheeks were red, her eyes were brown
Mark well what I do say
Her cheeks were red, her eyes were brown
Her curly hair was hanging down
I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid
A-roving, a-roving
Since roving's been my ruin
I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid
Landlord, which is the harpooneer
I'm to sleep with tonight?
He ain't among them.
He's what you might call
a dark-complexioned chap.
He'll be along
as soon as he finishes selling his head.
-His what?
-Selling his head.
Though he may have some difficulty
in getting rid of it.
New Bedford's overstocked.
-With what?
-Heads, of course!
Come on, lad.
Mark well what I do say
I kissed her once, I kissed her twice
And found she was as cold as ice
I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid
A-roving, a-roving
Since roving's been my ruin
I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid
Now, the young maid was fancy-free
Mark well what I do say
The young maid was fancy-free
If I could take her home with me
I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid
A-roving, a-roving
Since roving's been my ruin
I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid
-Wait. Hold on.
-Who the devil are you?
Who no speak? I kill you!
Landlord!
Peter Coffin! Coffin, save me!
Now, now, now.
What is all this about?
Why didn't you tell me
I was sleeping with a cannibal?
I thought you knowed.
Didn't I tell you
he was around the town selling heads?
Landlord, tell him to stash that tomahawk,
or pipe, or whatever you call it.
Well, pleasant dreams.
Better a sober cannibal
than a drunken Christian.
In this same New Bedford,
there stands a Whaleman 's Chapel...
and few are the fishermen shortly bound
for the Indian Ocean or Pacific...
who fail to visit there.
The will of God I did deny
And so my sacred duty fled
Oh, my Lord's awful penalty
Is not to die and yet be dead
The ribs and terrors in the whale
Arched over me a dismal gloom
While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by
And lift me deepening down to doom
I saw the opening maw of hell
With endless pains and sorrows there
Which none but they that feel can tell
Oh, I was plunging to despair
In black distress, I called my God
When I could scarce believe him mine
He bowed his ear to my complaints
No more the whale
Did me confine
Amen
"And God had prepared a great fish...
"to swallow up Jonah."
Shipmates...
the sin of Jonah...
was in his disobedience
of the command of God.
He found it a hard command.
And it was, shipmates...
for all the things that
God would have us do are hard.
If we would obey God,
we must disobey ourselves.
But Jonah still further flouts at God
by seeking to flee from him.
Jonah thinks that a ship made by men...
will carry him into countries
where God does not reign.
He prowls among the shipping...
Like a vile burglar,
hastening to cross the seas.
And as he comes aboard,
the sailors mark him.
The ship puts out...
but soon the sea rebels.
It will not bear the wicked burden.
The ship is like to break.
The boatswain calls
Boxes, bales, and jars
are clattering overboard.
The wind is shrieking. The men are yelling.
"l fear the Lord," cries Jonah...
"the God of heaven,
who hath made the sea and the dry land."
Again, the sailors mark him.
But wretched Jonah cries out to them
to cast him overboard...
for he knew that for his sake
this great tempest was upon them.
Now behold Jonah...
taken up as an anchor
and dropped into the sea...
into the dreadful jaws awaiting him.
to all his ivory teeth...
Like so many white bolts upon his prison.
And Jonah cries unto the Lord...
out of the fish's belly.
Nut observe his prayer, shipmates.
He doesn't weep and wail.
He feels his punishment is just.
He leaves deliverance to God.
And even out of the belly of hell...
grounded upon the ocean's utmost bones...
God heard him when he cried.
And God spake unto the whale.
And from the shuddering cold
and blackness of the deep...
the whale breached into the sun...
and vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
And Jonah...
bruised and beaten...
his ears like two seashells...
still multitudinously murmuring
of the ocean...
Jonah did the Almighty's bidding.
And what was that, shipmates?
To preach the truth
in the face of falsehood!
No, shipmates. Woe to him who seeks
to pour oil on the troubled waters...
when God has brewed them into a gale.
Yea, woe to him who,
as the pilot Paul has it...
while preaching to others
is himself a castaway.
Delight is to him...
and commodores of this earth...
stands forth his own inexorable self...
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"Moby Dick" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 22 Dec. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/moby_dick_13909>.
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