The Old Man and the Sea

Director: John Sturges, Fred Zinnemann John Sturges

Overview

Ernest Hemingway's short novel The Old Man and the Sea was probably unfilmable to begin with, but this didn't stop John Sturges from trying to cinematize Hemingway's tight little character study. 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 to "dream about the lions." Spencer Tracy may have been dreaming about the Oscar when he agreed to make this film, but Old Man and the Sea is defeated by pretentiousness and by several unconvincing "sea" scenes shot in a studio tank (even though both Tracy and director Sturges underwent incredible hardships filming in a real boat on the real ocean). Old Man and the Sea was remade as a 1990 made-for-TV movie starring Anthony Quinn, which compounded the mistakes made in the Tracy version by grafting on a pointless love story.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/08/2010
UPC:	0883929143504
Original Release:	1958
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Home Video
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:26:00
Sales rank:	5,961

Special Features

Closed Caption; Behind-the-scenes documentary; Hemingway: the legend and the sea

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Spencer Tracy	The Old Man
Felipe Pazos	The Boy
Harry Bellaver	Martin
Don Diamond	Cafe Proprietor
Don Blackman	Hand Wrestler
Joey Ray	Gambler
Richard Alameda	Gambler
Tony Rosa	Gambler
Robert Alderette	Gambler
Mauritz Hugo	Gambler
Mary Hemingway	Tourist
Carlos Rivero	Gambler
Don Alvarado	Actor
Dimitri Tiomkin	Conductor,Composer

Technical Credits

Peter Viertel

Ernest Hemingway

John Sturges	Director
Peter Viertel	Screenwriter
Leland Hayward	Producer
Arthur S. Rhoades	Special Effects
Fred Zinnemann	Director
Ernest Hemingway	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Though director John Sturges shot The Old Man and the Sea all over the Western hemisphere, his screen adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novella feels like a one-man stage play broken up by some nature footage. Luckily, the lead is one of cinema's most enduring and popular stars, Spencer Tracy. Though the film's narration may be somewhat pretentious, Tracy keeps the character likable and breathes some life into the script. The actor appears to have been bitten by the Method-acting bug that had been going around Hollywood in the 1950s: his intuitive performance suggests "James Dean and the Sea" more than Hemingway's version. The most striking moments are the scenes of the sharks attacking the boat; though Sturges was well known for his classic action movies (The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape), two uncredited directors (Fred Zinnemann and Henry King) worked on the film, and it's possible that Sturges was not responsible for the attack.