Saturday, September 27, 2003

 

I watched the 2nd version of Moby Dick made in 1930 and I was impressed!
Talk about a good movie, this version of Moby Dick, the 2nd made in 1930, was a masterpiece of film technology for the time it was made. It is about 80 minutes in length. It is not the story as I have read in the book by Herman Melville. This version tells the story of Ahab and how it was he lost his leg and what his life was like before becoming captain of the Pequod. And in this version, Ahab survives after killing Moby Dick to return home to woman he was betrothed to when he lost his leg. She initally had left him when he had lost his leg, and then later attempted to let him know she would marry him anyway, but ho goes off to hunt the whale instead. After killing Moby Dick, he returns home and goes to her and that is where the movie ends. The quality of the movie I saw on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) on cable, was too good to be an original; it must have been restored in some manner and whoever did the restoration did a fantastic job, especially on the soundtrack. OK, so it is in black and white, but the soundtrack has been cleaned up to remove a lot of the older film noises which were evident in the soundtrack quality available in 1930. Talkies had not been around for all that long when this version was made. Compared to what we have today, the soundtrack recording in 1930 was quite primitive. Wow, what a good job they did in this restoration! In 1930, the soundtrack was recorded as a band on the edge of the film strip, using a light which varied in brightness with the sound, a sound driven lamp. This was mixed in after the fact during post production since the sound was recorded on a separate strip during the original filming. The key to this process was the recent capability to make very thin filaments in light bulbs which would respond with very rapid changes in light intensity as the voltage changed to the bulb in the same manner as a loudspeaker reproduces sound from rapid voltage changes to the voice coil. In the 20's and before, the sound was a separate film strip which was played with the film in a separate playback projector, hopefully in sync with the image film strip. Splices when a film broke or the soundtrack strip broke would sometimes remove enough frames to cause a slight mismatch in the picture and sound with the separate sound and image strips. (The same would happen if the projectionist did not start the strips at the same time.) By the 30's, the sound had become integrated into the image strip on the edge which meant it was always in sync with the image. The development of photosensitive devices improved enough to make the edge soundtrack possible. And it was an ingenious system of lenses which made the width of the beam from the bulb vary with the intensity of the light emitted, of which I have no idea how it could have worked, but it did, made the integrated soundtrack on the edge of the film possible combined with the thin filaments and improved photodetector devices. It was a constand light shown through the varying width of the clear portion of the soundtrack which became the sound that was heard. The technology of the time was just so cool! Three things came together at the same time, improved post production editng, thin filament lamps and better photodetectors which made it all possible for this movie to be made in 1930. Id you get a chance, compare this version with the 50's version with Gregory Peck as Ahab. By the way, the 1st version was a silent film, and if I get the chance, I would love to see it, just so I can say I've seen them all.

Posted by: Rowlfe - at: 9/27/2003 09:37:00 PM

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