The Old Man and the Sea (1958 film)

The Old Man and the Sea
Directed by	John Sturges
Written by	Peter Viertel Ernest Hemingway (novella)
Produced by	Leland Hayward
Starring	Spencer Tracy
Narrated by	Spencer Tracy
Cinematography	James Wong Howe Add'l photography: Floyd Crosby, Tom Tutwiler Underwater photography: Lamar Boren
Edited by	Arthur P. Schmidt, Folmar Blangsted
Music by	Dimitri Tiomkin
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Running time	86 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$5 million

The Old Man and the Sea is a stupid piece of shit because its lame!!! thak u1958 film starring Spencer Tracy, in a portrayal for which he was nominated for a best actor Oscar. The screenplay (the "most literal, word-for-word rendition of a written story ever filmed") was adapted by Peter Viertel from the novella of the same name by Ernest Hemingway, and the film was directed by John Sturges. Stuges called it "technically the sloppiest picture I have ever made."

Dimitri Tiomkin won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on the film, one that was also nominated for best color cinematography.

Plot summary

Spencer Tracy is the Old Man, a Cuban fisherman who tries to haul in a huge fish that he catches far from shore.

Cast

In addition to Tracy, the cast included the following:

• Felipe Pazos Jr., the boy
• Harry Bellaver, Martin
• Don Diamond, café proprietor
• Don Blackman, arm wrestler
• Joey Ray, gambler
• Mary Hemingway, tourist
• Richard Alameda, gambler
• Tony Rosa, gambler
• Carlos Rivero, gambler
• Robert Alderette, gambler
• Mauritz Hugo, gambler

Production

Fred Zinnemann was the film's original director; after he withdrew, he was replaced by John Sturges. The film's budget—originally $2 million— grew to $5 million "in search of suitable fish footage." According to Turner Classic Movies, a February 2005 CNN article points out that The Old Man and the Sea was one of the first films to "use a bluescreen compositing technology invented by Arthur Widmer that combined actors on a soundstage with a pre-filmed background."

The credits note that "Some of the marlin film used in this picture was of the world's record catch by Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. at the Cabo Blanco Fishing Club in Peru. Mr. Glassell acted as special advisor for these sequences."

Felipe Pazos Jr., who played the role of the boy in the film, is the son of the Cuban economist, Felipe Pazos.

Reception

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote:

Credit Leland Hayward for trying something off the beaten track in making a motion-picture version of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and credit Spencer Tracy for a brave performance in its one big role. Also credit Dimitri Tiomkin for providing a musical score that virtually puts Mr. Tracy in the position of a soloist with a symphony. And that just about completes a run-down of the praiseworthy aspects of this film.

Among the film's short-comings, Crowther notes, is that "an essential feeling of the sweep and surge of the open sea is not achieved in precise and placid pictures that obviously were shot in a studio tank. There are, to be sure, some lovely long shots of Cuban villages and the colorful coast...But the main drama, that of the ordeal, is played in a studio tank, and even some fine shots of a marlin breaking the surface and shaking in violent battle are deflated by obvious showing on the process screen."

Time noted that "the script follows the book in almost every detail" and called the novel a fable "no more suitable for the screen than The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"; Tracy was "never permitted to catch a marlin" while on location, so the "camera could never catch him at it" and the result is "Sturges must cross-cut so interminably—fish, Tracy, fish, Tracy—that Old Man loses the lifelikeness, the excitement, and above all the generosity of rhythm that the theme requires.

External links

• The Old Man and the Sea at IMDb
• The Old Man and the Sea at AllMovie
• The Old Man and the Sea at the TCM Movie Database