The Old Man and the Sea (1958 film)
The Old Man and the Sea is a 1958 American adventure drama film directed by John Sturges and starring Spencer Tracy. The screenplay by Peter Viertel was based on the 1952 novella of the same name by Ernest Hemingway.
The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea
1952 novella
by Ernest Hemingway
- James Wong Howe
- Additional photography:
- Floyd Crosby
- Tom Tutwiler
- Underwater photography:
- Lamar Boren[1]
- October 7, 1958 (New York City Premiere)
- October 11, 1958
United States
English
$5 million[4]
Dimitri Tiomkin won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on the film. The film was also nominated for Best Color Cinematography (Howe) and Best Actor (Tracy).
Plot[edit]
The Old Man in the film is a Cuban fisherman who has gone 84 days without a catch. His only friend is a 14-year-old boy named Manolin, who has been barred by his father from accompanying the Old Man out to sea. On the Old Man's 85th day out, he finally hooks a huge marlin, which he then tries to haul in from far out past shore. For three days and nights he battles the fish, which is portrayed in the film (as it had been in Hemingway's novella) as a trial of mental and physical courage that becomes the ultimate test for him of his worth as a man.
Production[edit]
The director originally assigned to the film was Fred Zinnemann, but he withdrew, and was replaced by John Sturges.[4][5] The film's budget, originally $2 million, grew to $5 million "in search of suitable fish footage."[4] Sturges called it "technically the sloppiest picture I have ever made."[4]
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."[6]
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."[6][7]