NR | 1h 26m | Drama | 1958
Based on Ernest Hemingway’s novel, “The Old Man and the Sea” is about a man defying, then making peace with nature’s power and fragility, while reconciling with his own double-edged nature.
Now, as barely alive man and quite dead fish head to shore, the marlin’s leaking blood invites starving sharks. Valiantly, the fisherman tries to fend them off with his harpoon, broken knife, and gnarled hands, both bruised from wrestling his oar, rudder, sail and cruelly taut fishing line. Will this battle have only one outcome: the marlin’s loss and the old man’s triumph? Is death, by itself, defeat?
Commending Hemingway’s prose, Peter Viertel’s screenplay sticks almost verbatim to Hemingway’s text. Dimitri Tiomkin’s Oscar-winning score makes even everyday scenes seem extraordinary. Used to screenplays crammed with characters but shorn of them here, director John Sturges treats the sea, boat, birds, sea creatures, even the fishing-line as characters. His 60-second opening montage depicts the seashore, pier, lighthouse, fishing village, and fishermen hurling nets out to sea or drying them inland. Conscious of how desolate his screen’s about to get, Sturges crowds his early frames with children, women, men, animals, trees, grasses, sands, shacks, and skies.
Doubling as narrator, 58-year-old Tracy manages to look well for a man over 78 years old. His eyelids droop. His rasping voice is low. Anticipating even the tiniest victories, he bites his lower lip in a clenched grin or lolls his tongue open-mouthed. As his aching back nearly gives way, he winces mid-sentence, his head falling until his chin kisses his neck.
A Battle With Himself
Hemingway reportedly dismissed rhetoric around his story’s symbolism. That shouldn’t deter readers or audiences from drawing meaning from the novel and film. The old man’s battle with the marlin is arguably a battle with himself, his impetuousness, his limitations, his fears, and his misconceptions.His trip isn’t so much a fishing expedition as it is a voyage of self-assertion and self-discovery. It’s at once a test and a renewal of faith in his self-reliance, skill, and spunk. The old man realizes that hostility and brutality are a part of Nature’s beauty, just as death and dying are a part of life’s.
Sturges nods at Hemingway’s biblical allusions. Lashed to that skiff, it’s as if the fish has sacrificed itself so that reborn, the old man may grasp his oneness with, rather than his apartness from, nature. Elsewhere, it’s the old man who feels like the sacrificial lamb.
Calling the marlin “old fish,” he wonders, “Is he bringing me in, or am I bringing him in?” When sharks attack the fish, it’s the old man who feels attacked. His three days and nights at sea are akin to death to his shortsighted old self, and resurrection to an enlightened new self. Back on land, he trudges toward his shack, and collapses repeatedly, the weight of his shouldered masthead like a giant cross. He laments his lack of restraint, apologizing to the fish, “I went out too far … ruined us both.” He hints at an undying spirit that outlives the body: “Man is not made for defeat. Man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
To Hemingway, faith relied on both fulfillment and promise. The narrator warns, “In the dark, the old man could feel the morning coming.” Fishermen head seawards even while it’s dark because the sun has never disappointed. There’s always a new day. The sea doesn’t disappoint either. There’s always the promise of another catch.
But neither fulfillment nor promise warrants complacency. The old man prays because luck is welcome, but clarifies, “I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes, you are ready.” He believes in redemption, but he’ll work for it, and won’t take it for granted.
