The Old Man and the Sea (1958)
Directed by John Sturges, Henry King

Film Review

Ernest Hemingway's Pulitzer Prize winning novella The Old Man and the Sea is not the most obvious work of literature that anyone would want to translate to the big screen, but producer Leland Hayward was determined to have a stab at it,  and achieved some success with this daring and uniquely poetic film, which features Spencer Tracy in one of his most challenging roles.  Fred Zinnemann was originally assigned to direct the film, but he pulled out at an early stage and was replaced by John Sturges, who found the film to be his most technically demanding and least satisfactory.  Hemingway's story certainly posed tremendous difficulties for both the lead actor and the director, and whilst the film now appears pretty clunky, marred by a poor match between location and studio footage, it is not without charm.  This is one of the few adaptations of his work that Hemingway was entirely happy with, and it is arguably the one that is closest in spirit and substance to its literary source.

The Old Man and the Sea has often been criticised for its reliance on voiceover narration, which continues throughout the length of the film, presumably to make up for the lack of dialogue.  Whilst the narration is certainly over-used and does at times weaken the impact of the visuals, because it employs Hemingway's succinct prose it does heighten the film's lyrical power and helps to distract us from the brutally jarring transitions between the studio and location shots.  The film's main flaw is its failure to use the recently invented blue screen process in an effective and convincing way.  Too often, it looks as if Tracy is sitting in a mock-up boat in the studio, working a little too hard to react to pictures of the sea that are projected onto a screen behind him.  Even with an actor of Tracy's calibre, it is a struggle to hold onto the illusion that he is hundreds of miles out to sea and not merely sitting in a studio tank.

Technically imperfect as it is, The Old Man and the Sea is nonetheless a beguiling work that somehow carries the essential lyricism of Hemingway's remarkable short story.  Dimitri Tiomkin's beautiful score subtly works on the emotions and allows us to see past the unconvincing visuals and develop an intense spiritual bond with the old man as he endures his greatest physical and moral challenge.  To a generation that has grown used to seamless computer generated trickery, this film will no doubt appear risibly out-dated, yet for those who can see beyond mere surface impressions it is hard not to succumb to the film's naive charm and poetry.  And with Spencer Tracy on board it can hardly fail to be an involving and memorably uplifting piece of cinema.

Film Synopsis

Each morning, an old Cuban fisherman sets out to sea in his battered skiff and returns empty handed at the end of each day, to be met by the only friend he has, a kind little boy.  It has been 84 days since the old man last caught a fish and everyone who knows him thinks he is cursed with bad luck.  This is why the boy's father refuses to allow him to go fishing with the old man.  On the 85th day, the old man goes out to sea as usual and is taken by surprise when he hooks a fish, a large, powerful beast of a fish.  The fish turns out to be a marlin, and is larger than the old man's boat.  The fish is not ready to give in without a fight and begins to drag the old man and his boat further out to sea.  What ensues is a test of patient endurance between a fish of rare strength and vitality and a solitary old man who is willing to risk everything so that he may achieve his one last victory over the sea...