Herman Melville

Herman Melville

Birth : 1819-08-01, New York City, New York, USA

Death : 1891-09-28

History

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd. His first three books gained much contemporary attention (the first, Typee, becoming a bestseller), but after a fast-blooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime. When he died in 1891, he was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, especially Moby-Dick which was hailed as one of the literary masterpieces of both American and world literature. He was the first writer to have his works collected and published by the Library of America.

Profile

Herman Melville

Movies

Ishmael
Writer
Filmed primarily at sea onboard an active fishing trawler, Ishmael is a blending of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick with a personal story of a battle with terminal illness.
Bartleby
Story
An unassuming Wall Street lawyer finds himself beset by a new employee, Bartleby, who refuses to work--in an ongoing act of passive refusal, he simply 'prefers not to.' A quiet, dogged battle of the wills ensues in this stop-motion reimagining of a Melville classic.
Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd
Novel
2010: Moby Dick
Story
That infamous whale is bigger, badder and a whole lot stronger in this sci-fi reimagining of Herman Melville’s classic tale of the battle between man, sea and sea creature starring “Xena” alum Rene O’Connor as the (traditionally male) narrator. But the boat — now a high-tech submarine — is also bigger, and Capt. Ahab is as determined as ever to settle the score and take down the mighty sea mammal that maimed him.
Captain Ahab
Novel
When Ahab's mother dies in childbirth, the infant's gruff father places his son in the care of his pious aunt. It is Rose who sparks the imagination of the young boy by teaching him to read the Bible, though when Ahab is reclaimed by his father a decade later the growing boy strives to become a hunter like his old man. Later, after Ahab warms to his father's lover Louise, the old man dies and the boy is sent back to his God-fearing aunt. Rejecting Rose and her abusive husband Henry's unforginv brand of discipline and infuriated that his aunt confiscated the locket given to him by Louise, young Ahab boldly stages his own kidnapping as an ingenious escape plan.
A Baleia Branca - Uma Ideia de Deus
Novel
Follows the creation of a stage play adaptation of "Moby Dick".
Capitaine Achab
Novel
The film follows a young Achab and the events that inspire his eventual journey to the sea.
Partanen
Short Story
Machine shop entrepreneur Partanen has severe work pressures and his life is messed up. The foundation of Partanen's life is work. Due to rather unfit subordinates and increasing production pressure, he decides to hire a new employee.
Bartleby
Novel
An adaptation of Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" told in the setting of a modern office.
Moby Dick
Novel
Moby Dick is an unfinished film by Orson Welles, filmed in 1971. It is not to be confused with the incomplete (and now lost) 1955 film Welles made of his meta-play Moby Dick—Rehearsed, or with Moby Dick (1956 film), in which Welles played a supporting role. The film consists of readings by Welles from the book Moby Dick, shot against a blue background with various optical illusions to give the impression of being at sea. It was made during a break in the filming of The Other Side of the Wind. There is some ambiguity about what Welles intended to do with the footage, and how he was going to compile it. It remained unedited in his lifetime.
Beau Travail
Story
Foreign Legion officer Galoup recalls his once glorious life, training troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, until the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind.
Pola X
Novel
A writer leaves his upper-class life and journeys with a woman claiming to be his sister, and her two friends.
Pola X
Writer
A writer leaves his upper-class life and journeys with a woman claiming to be his sister, and her two friends.
The Adventures of Moby Dick
Novel
Animated feature about a young whale named Moby Dick.
Moby Dick
Novel
In 1841 young Ishmael signs aboard the whaling ship Pequod, under the command of the strict, one-legged Capt. Ahab. Ishmael soon finds out that Ahab is searching for the legendary while whale Moby Dick, who cost Ahab his leg, and he will let nothing stand in the way of his getting his revenge on the beast.
Bartleby
Novel
Adaptation of the novel "Bartleby the Scrinener: A story of Wall Street" (1853) by Hermann Melville.
Bartleby
Story
An asocial and enigmatic office clerk refuses to do his work, leaving it up to his boss to decide what should be done with him.
Bartleby
Novel
French short adaptation of Herman Melville's classic. The employee of a lawyer is in a mental hospital following a scandal. Some time later, he finds his employer.
Bartleby
Story
Bartleby, an enigmatic man who calmly refuses to carry out his duties, is introduced in this period dramatization of Melville’s haunting story as a scrivener in a 1969 film production of Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation.
Billy Budd
Author
A version of Benjamin Britten's opera based on the Melville story. Will the virtuous young sailor Billy Budd be hanged for murder?
Enchanted Isles
Story
A French sailor circa 1850, disembarks in a desert Atlantic island, and discovers a woman who had survived for many years her father and brother, dead while searching for mysterious valuables. The young couple discover paradise, and its end.
Billy Budd
Novel
Billy is an innocent, naive seaman in the British Navy in 1797. When the ship's sadistic master-at-arms is murdered, Billy is accused and tried.
Enchanted Island
Author
Two 19th-century sailors jump ship only to discover their tropical paradise is a cannibal stronghold.
Moby Dick
Author
In 1841, young Ishmael signs up for service abroad the Pequod, a whaler sailing out of New Bedford. The ship is under the command of Captain Ahab, a strict disciplinarian who exhorts his men to find Moby Dick, the great white whale. Ahab lost his his leg to that creature and is desperate for revenge. As the crew soon learns, he will stop at nothing to gain satisfaction.
Moby Dick—Rehearsed
Novel
Moby Dick—Rehearsed is a two-act drama by Orson Welles. The play was staged June 16–July 9, 1955, at the Duke of York's Theatre in London, in a production directed by Welles. Welles used minimal stage design. The stage was bare, the actors appeared in contemporary street clothes, and the props were minimal. For example, brooms were used for oars, and a stick was used for a telescope. The actors provided the action, and the audience's imagination provided the ocean, costumes, and the whale. Welles filmed approximately 75 minutes of the production, with the original cast, at the Hackney Empire and Scala Theatres in London. He hoped to sell the film to Omnibus, the United States television series which had presented his live performance of King Lear in 1953; but Welles stopped shooting when he was disappointed in the results. The film is considered lost.
Moby Dick
Novel
The demented, ruthless Captain Ahab pursues the white whale which took off his leg years before.
Omoo-Omoo the Shark God
Novel
The curse of a shark god follows a group of people who have violated a sacred jungle idol.
Demon of the Sea
Novel
Ahab pursues a whale that chewed off a leg when his brother, vying with him for the hand of a minister's daughter, pushed him overboard. When he has caught the monstrous whale he will then deal with his brother.
Moby Dick
Novel
Herman Melville's mad Capt. Ahab (John Barrymore) spends years hunting the white whale that got his leg.
The Sea Beast
Novel
Based on Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick."