One could have plenty of quarrels with this as an adaptation of the Herman Melville novel, but it’s still one of the better John Huston films of the 50s. Ray Bradbury collaborated with Huston on the script, and some of the poetry of the original is retained; Orson Welles is a strong Father Mapple, and his sermon about Jonah is one of the film’s high points; Richard Basehart makes a plausible Ishmael. But Gregory Peck’s Ahab, made up to resemble the head of a penny, is problematic, and the filmmakers’ notion of turning him into a Christ figure seems especially misguided. Oswald Morris’s cinematography gets some fine atmospheric effects out of muted colors. The range of the novel is (to say the least) shortchanged, but if one can accept a Classics Illustrated version this has its moments. With Leo Genn, Friedrich Ledebur, Royal Dano, James Robertson Justice, and Harry Andrews (1956). 116 min. (JR)