THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA: Blu-ray (Warner Bros., 1958) Warner Archive

I confess. Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea has always been more than a bit of a slog for me, the tale of Santiago, a careworn Cuban fisherman questioning his competency until he hooks a marlin, then deciding not to return to shore until it is half-eaten by sharks, waiting for some sort of redemption, arguably, never to come, left me with more questions than answers about man’s struggle against the elements and his own insecurities. Sacrilege, I know. So, director, John Sturges had a Herculean swell to scale in this expanded upon, big-screen adaptation from 1958. Spencer Tracy, is the titular title character, sporting a laughably affected accent, almost as awkward as his stab at Portuguese in 1937’s Captains Courageous. At least in this one he does not sport curly locks. Even so, Tracy’s appeal in The Old Man in the Sea is marginal at best. He is a gruff and unshaven Tidy Bowl man in his little dinghy, endlessly bounced about a backlot tank with unconvincing wind and wave effects, a blue-screen subbing in for the real deal of the ocean.  We cannot even give it to producer, Leland Hayward for trying ‘something new.’ While most of the action takes place on a single set, Hitchcock did it first – and infinitely better – nearly a decade before in Lifeboat (1944). There is only so much to be done with artifice under confined studio conditions. And The Old Man and the Sea tries to get a lot of mileage from this economization.

Is it a success? Hardly. Difficult to suggest where lies the lion’s share of the blame. Spencer Tracy is one of the most accomplished actors of any generation – period – as he has proven throughout his long and illustrious career. But The Old Man and the Sea gives Tracy too much of Hemingway’s existential crisis to digest and his regurgitations of it lack both power and the wisdom of a curmudgeonly sage contemplating the great ‘why’ in life. The rest of the cast, to be grotesquely marginalized in this one-man fish fable, float in and out of consciousness with vague shades of meaning, but no genuine depth.  Sturges and screenwriter, Peter Viertel have remained slavishly devoted to Hemingway. But in the end, it’s an incredibly prosaic contemplation, never to crystalize into compelling cinema. Sporadically, Tracy finds elemental strength from the author’s reconstituted majesty and plies his actor’s acumen to will tangible treasures from this ‘mostly in your head’ deliberation on the futility of life. Is it Tracy’s fault? Not exactly. But Hemingway’s nobility proves elusive and un-filmable.

Ostensibly, the marlin gets more playtime, more than a mythical sea creature caught in a long-drawn-out mêlée with Santiago. Herein, Santiago forecasts his inner self onto the marlin whom he identifies as sharing in his own passion for survival. Mercy passes into veneration, then empathy, as man and beast are inextricably invested in this predator and prey struggle for survival. Only one can endure. Yet, for an interminable stretch of screen time, it remains questionable who and how. With the marlin’s ultimate sacrifice, Santiago’s triumph is hollow, rather than assured. He is forced to protect his trophy from falling prey to a much larger fish – a mako shark, intent on making it, and possibly Santiago, its dinner. Hemingway’s references to Christ get watered down – figuratively – in Viertel’s screenplay, the elemental battle of wills viewed from a more secular stance.  The scavenger sharks strip the marlin of its material value, leaving skeletal remains lashed to Santiago's skiff as it lumbers into port with only 18-feet of bones. Even so, this is, by far, the grandest catch ever recorded by local villagers. Yet, only the boy, Manolin (Felipe Pazos Jr.) can appreciate it as he takes the marlin’s spear into his hands, a concrete representation of Santiago’s ethereal hopes and wishes for him, for the future.  

The Old Man and the Sea had a long incubation period. Almost immediately upon its publication in 1952, Humphrey Bogart tried to snatch up the rights to produce it under his homegrown Santana banner with Nicholas Ray directing. Sufficiently weathered – physically – and even more appropriately jaded in his own character, Bogart soundly identified with Santiago. Alas, he was outbid by Warner Bros. Curiously, the studio then sat on the property for nearly the rest of the decade, seemingly to contemplate nearly every actor in Tinsel Town except Bogart. Ultimately, Bogart’s death in 1957 put a period to his participation. Fred Zinnemann was then assigned to direct. For reasons never entirely disclosed through studio memos, Zinnemann withdrew, perhaps, in preparation for the monumental challenges on The Nun’s Story (1959).  In preparing for the role, Spencer Tracy flew to Cuba for an audience with the author. Hemingway was initially pleased with this casting. But his attitude would change once the picture was in the can.

Meanwhile, the picture’s budget swelled from $2 to 5 million. Hemingway was involved in the production, reportedly gone marlin fishing off the coast of Peru to find the perfect ‘live’ specimen for the movie. In the end, Warner Bros. settled on a rubber facsimile and some crudely assembled stock footage of actual marlin fishing shot without Hemingway’s participation. And while Hemingway and his wife can be briefly glimpsed in the café scene, the author’s ultimate disappointment with the finished movie rested entirely on what he perceived as Spencer Tracy’s inability to immerse himself in the character of Santiago. Despite Hemingway’s dissatisfaction, Tracy did earn an Oscar nod for the role – lost to David Niven for his tender performance as the disgraced Major Angus in Separate Tables. As for Sturges…better known for creating art from reality, the heavy influence on studio-bound production values left the director forever queasy, later to refer to The Old Man and the Sea as “technically, the sloppiest picture I have ever made!”

Viewed today, The Old Man and the Sea is still a fish story gone awry. It lacks something in its transition from page to screen and forfeits the right to be considered a truly outstanding cinematic experience. The same can be said of the Warner Archive’s newly minted Blu-ray. Due diligence has been applied to the remastering process. But there is only so much to be done with flawed original elements. So, where does the fault lie – in the interminable dupes spliced into the picture and the over-reliance on optical shots, photographed and composited from elements shot under disparate lighting conditions. Cinematographer, James Wong Howe certainly had his work cut out for him on this shoot. His original photography is a testament of sorts, but also a botch, culled from problematic Eastman stock, further degraded by the aforementioned picture-making techniques of their time.  Arguably, the image did not fare any better in 1958. So, what is here, intermittently bold/occasionally faded colors, amplified grain, anemic contrast, and, some gritty dupes, is pretty darn faithful to the theatrical experience – such as it was and remains.  There is better news for the 2.0 DTS mono audio, which captures the grandeur in Dimitri Tiomkin’s Oscar-winning underscore. There are no extras here, and just as well as this lackluster excursion into Hemingway does not support the effort. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

1

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

0