The Old Man and the Sea (1958)

Fantastic!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A film adaptation of Hemingway's Pulitzer winning novella. The best that can be said about it is Spencer Tracy's Academy Award nominated performance, a winning score, and the sumptuous colour photography also recognised that year. It is a completely faithful adaptation to the novella in terms of narrative and Tracy embodies the old man wonderfully, particularly in capturing the modesty and kindliness of Santiago - the Cuban apprentice boy's hero. The film's shortcomings can be said to be the production values of what is the central piece of the film - the scenes at sea. We are also thwarted by the inability of the producers to effect Santiago's wrestling with the fish, though brilliant stock footage of big fish assuages this disappointment in many of the sequences. All in all, viewers will admire Tracy for his naturalism on screen - something that comes easy to very few film actors in the history of cinema.

The story begins, as you might expect, with an old man. He is a fisherman who has gone 84 days without catching a fish. We also meet a boy who is very close friends with the old man. The old man taught him to fish when he was young, and the boy brings the old man food. The old man is named Santiago and the close friend is Manalion. This old man goes to sleep dreaming of the lions he used to see back in the day in Africa. He wakes before sunrise and does what fishermen do, gets into his boat and heads out to fish in the sea. Not too long after that, the old man hooks a ridiculously big fish. it was a shark, a A marlin to be exact. Most of the novel consists of this struggle, which lasts over three days out inn the sea. It is a battle of strength and of wills. The old man sees the fish as his brother, not his enemy. Yet that does not stop him from killing the marlin.But this is no happy ending. It's just a happy mid-point followed by an extraordinarily sad ending. The old man straps the fish to the side of the boat and heads home. On the way, he is attacked by sharks, who slowly but surely eat away at the marlin while the old man, starving and exhausted, tries to beat them off with a harpoon, a club, and finally nothing but a simple knife. By the time he makes it back to shore, there is nothing left of the fish but a skeleton. Santiago later goes to sleep and dreams of the lions, dreams of his youth.I personally enjoyed this movie as well as the novel. I would recommend this movie to a dear friend.

It's a short story that should be impossible to translate into a visual medium, but surprisingly this quiet drama about an old man talking to himself in a boat works quite well as a movie. This version is moving and thought-provoking in the same ways as the novella. The B-reel of the huge, leaping marlin is real and impressive, and believably integrated with the footage of Spencer Tracy. The story is a great vehicle for Tracy's ability to project restraint and dignity, and his careworn face makes him an ideal choice for the role of the old fisherman even in the absence of any Cuban ancestry. The DVD special features are worth a look, too, as they show author Hemingway observing the production, contributing to it as a technical adviser, and fishing during the shoot.

Ernest Hemingway's novella,The Old Man and the Sea was probably extremely difficult to film to begin with, but this didn't stop John Sturges from trying to put Hemingway's tight little character study into film.The Old Man and the Sea is a 1958 film starring Spencer Tracy. The screenplay was adapted by Peter Viertel from the novella and the film was directed by Sturges.Spencer Tracy is the Old Man, a Cuban fisherman who tries to haul in a huge fish that he catches far from shore. Tracy's tiny boat is besieged by sharks and by natural elements, but the Old Man stubbornly sticks to his job. In the end, the fish is nothing more than a skeleton, and the Old Man returns to his tiny hovel. In this movie,Tracy did great great for himself as he was able to put to life a movie the features himself mostly with no other characters involved.I personally could say that he was born to play the old fisherman.As for the screenplay,the movie was a great adaptation of Hemingway's novella.The only negative thing I could say was that the film was very poor in its technical aspects as inconsistencies in very obvious all throughout many scenes.I could have given this movie a 10/10 rating if not for this.