The Old Man and the Sea (1958)

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Movie
German title The old man
and the sea
Original title The Old Man and the Sea
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1958
length 89 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director John Sturges
script Peter's Quarter
production Leland Hayward for
Warner Bros. Pictures
music Dimitri Tiomkin
camera Tom Tutwiler ,
James Wong Howe ,
Lamar Boren ,
Floyd Crosby
cut Arthur P. Schmidt
occupation
synchronization

The old man and the sea (original title: The Old Man and the Sea ) is an American drama film by director John Sturges from 1958, based on the novel of the same name by Ernest Hemingway , first published in New York in 1952. The main role of the fisherman Santiago is cast with Spencer Tracy .

action

The old Cuban fisherman Santiago has not caught anything in 84 days. To his misfortune comes the fact that his apprentice Manolin is sent by his parents to more successful fishermen. Even so, Manolin visits the old man every evening, helps him with heavy work, makes sure that he eats and discusses baseball with him, since Santiago is a fan of the famous player Joe DiMaggio .

One morning the old fisherman drives far out into the gulf in the hope of an end to his bad luck. He puts out his lines, and in the afternoon a fish, a marlin , does indeed bite . As an experienced fisherman, Santiago immediately recognizes that it is a very large specimen that cannot simply be pulled into the boat. He really wants this fish. Its success, however, would be jeopardized if the bait hook that the fish has swallowed tears out or the line breaks before the fish is exhausted. In this way, Santiago cushions every jolt of the strong fish with his bruised hands and bent back. Two days and two nights go by. The fisherman's frame of mind gets something intoxicating, caused by the privations, the insomnia and also by the increasing admiration for the mighty fish. This is no longer mere prey, in a quiet dialogue he almost becomes a friend of Santiago.

After a hard fight, the exhausted fisherman manages to pull the animal alongside and kill it with a harpoon . He ties it to the side of his little boat and sails the long way back to the harbor. At first the old man indulges in his success, is already selling his booty in his mind and sees hungry people at the sumptuous feast. But then the sobering reality begins. On the long way back, the blood of the dead fish attracts various sharks. Santiago can kill the first, a large mako , with a harpoon. In doing so, he loses the weapon. After small initial successes, he can no longer defend the fish against the many scavengers, and soon the sharks have devoured the flesh of the marlin. Only the skeleton is left. Quarreling with himself, Santiago went to bed immediately after arriving home and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The next morning a group of fishermen sneak around the boat with the skeleton, the size of which still shows the old man's achievement. Tourists from the nearby café also flock here. Manolin, who was worried about Santiago, is relieved to find him sleeping. When the old fisherman wakes up, they promise each other to fish together again. Calmed and still exhausted, Santiago falls asleep again and sees lions in his dreams frolicking on an African beach.

shape

The film is elaborately produced in color and in widescreen format. To alienate the dream scenes, for which lions, dolphins and other animals were filmed that animate Santiago's imaginations, various trick lenses were used that are otherwise rarely used in the film. Underwater photos showing the sharks attacking the hunted fish caused additional costs. Since many scenes in the studio were filmed in an artificial pool in front of a background projection and Santiago's fight with the fish could not be filmed in a long shot , but only in close-ups, which only create the scenario of a fight through the montage , various critics complained that the film looked cheaply made despite the high manufacturing costs.

Production, background

The filming, which lasted almost two years and began in late April and lasted until late July 1956 and continued from mid-July to late August 1957, took place off Cuba , Ecuador , the Galapagos Islands , the Bahamas and Hawaii . The production was widely recognized by the press, as Hemingway's novella had now achieved the status of a modern American classic. The problems during production were significant, the weather didn't cooperate, and a dispute between producer Hayward and director Fred Zinnemann about the script didn't help. For various reasons Zinnemann, who had been suggested by Viertel, dropped out; so he disapproved of the scenes that took place at sea, and he also disliked the fact that they were so far behind schedule. Since the bad weather period did not want to pass, Hayward was forced to stop the production of the film. The decision was then made to shoot in the Warner Studio in Burbank and create an artificial sea that consisted of over two million liters of water. Since the preparations for this were considerable, Tracy shot the film A Woman Who Knows Everything with Katharine Hepburn in between . When he resumed filming for The Old Man and the Sea , he had largely lost interest in the film and his former enthusiasm had been wiped away. He also had strong doubts that such a long film, showing a lonely old man in a small boat, could captivate viewers.

Originally, Humphrey Bogart had applied for the film rights to Hemingway's novel for his production company Santana Productions. Bogart wanted to make the film with himself in the lead and with Nicholas Ray as director. He didn't get the rights, however, and the role eventually went to friend Spencer Tracy after Anthony Quinn was also discussed. Ernest Hemingway was not at all fond of Tracy in the role of the fisherman. Tracy looked too rich and too little like a Cuban fisherman. During the repeatedly interrupted filming, various difficulties arose, also due to the fact that Tracy began to drink again and it even came about that they wanted to replace him with Ernest Borgnine .

In addition, Hemingway rejected both the first version of the script by Paul Osborn , who had adapted John Steinbeck's novel Jenseits von Eden for the film, and that of Paul Green and insisted that his friend Peter Viertel, who had already written the script for Hemingway's novel Fiesta had made a revision. Osborn had built up the character of Manolin, the little Cuban boy who idolized Santiago, removed all flashbacks and the narrator of the story and added a delirious sequence. Viertel then had a narrator from the off read Hemingway's text parallel to the story on the screen in order to preserve the poetry of his words. The second draft of the district was then approved by Hemingway. The writer himself acted as a technical advisor. Mary Hemingway, Hemingway's fourth and last wife, made a cameo in the film as a tourist.

Dimitri Tiomkin, who later composed the film score, which was later awarded an Oscar , advocated that his lush, symphonic score should be supplemented by a title song, for which he wanted Mahalia Jackson to be the singer. In this respect, however, it was overruled.

publication

When the film was presented to a test audience in Pasadena, it received a high score from the majority of viewers, so Warner Bros. considered it an Oscar candidate. Most of the critics also responded positively. The film premiered on October 7, 1958 in Los Angeles and New York, and opened generally in the United States on October 11, 1958. It was published in the Federal Republic of Germany on October 17, 1958. In the German Democratic Republic on October 22, 1965. In West Germany it was first shown on TV on April 12, 1968, in East Germany on May 17, 1981.

It has also been published in Japan, Denmark, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Turkey, Finland and Hungary. It was shown on television in Spain in 1967. It has also been published in Australia, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania. Serbia, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

The film was released on September 21, 2006 by Warner Home Video with a German soundtrack on DVD.

Review

The original cost of the film, estimated at $ 2 million, exploded to over $ 5 million (other sources say about $ 6 million), which was accompanied by the disproportionately long time to completion. Allegedly Tracy had a 30% stake in the film. However, the film failed to achieve commercial success. In addition, Hemingway was not very nice about the finished film in public, especially with regard to the child actor who played Manolin. But he also spoke negatively about Spencer Tracy and said that he looked like he was playing Gertrude Stein as an old, fat fisherman.

All in all, the film represents a rare attempt by a major studio to create art. The advantages and flaws of the film are roughly balanced. James Wong Howe's color camera and Tiomkin's moving score are often breathtaking but also contradictory. Tracy's portrayal is mostly described as one of the best of his career, but there are also voices who see his role as a rather tired imitation of his performance from the 1937 adventure film Manuel . The sound recording of Tracy's voice, which was superimposed on individual film scenes, is also controversial , as this often interferes with what could have been expressed more effectively in a purely visual way. All in all, however, the film was very close to Hemingway's novella, both historically and spiritually.

Reviews

Most of the critics reacted positively to the American premiere at the time. For example, the Los Angeles Times found it to be one of the "most beautiful films of all time" and the New York National Board of Review wrote of the "best film of the year". Also Bosley Crowther of the New York Times was full of praise and said that Tracy looked convincing old with his close-cropped white hair and the beard and the creaking painful movements of an old stiff man demonstrating impressive as is the primal force that is inherent in him, so that Heart could bleed for this old guy with torn hands.

At the time, Der Spiegel said that director John Sturges had “fallen into the wrong view” “that it must be possible to transfer Hemingway's poetry - the age-old parable of the blissful futility of human effort - into film by conventional means, after Fred Zinnemann [...], who was initially supposed to stage the opus, had abdicated ”. It went on to say, “a thick layer of lush Warner color and mushy, ear-stuffing documentary film music lay over the artfully simple-minded dialogue of the old man with the sea and fish and himself”. However, "as with other inadequate versions of Hemingway's films, the power of the original can still be sensed." Although Spencer Tracy does not resemble the portrait of the old man in a book, he “manages the demanding part as well as it is possible to film a non-filmable subject”.

Jeff Stafford wrote at Turner Classic Movies that Hemingway's Pulitzer Prize- winning novella also served as an allegory , despite the simplified plot , and that Santiago's noble battle with Old Testament parallels symbolized the fisherman as an alter ego for Hemingway, who fought for his former glory and regaining his strength as a writer in his later years. The story turned out to be irresistible to Hollywood, but its trip to the big screen turned out to be as difficult and elusive as Santiago's attempts to get hold of the giant marlin.

The film-dienst described the Hemingway adaptation as a "[t] extreet, but only partially doing justice to the atmosphere and literary rank of Hemingway's short novel of the same name". Spencer Tracy is "excellent" in the title role, but the film is "worth considering in its spiritual dimensions". The evangelical film observer spoke of "a film adaptation that does justice to the sparse, cinematic in and of itself attractive original in a creditable way and which can be recommended for ages 14 and up".

"With this great one-man show, Spencer Tracy and director John Sturges disproved all those who always considered Ernest Hemingway's story to be ineligible for film," said Cinema and concluded that Tracy had delivered a "[g] freakish game."

On the Moviepilot page it was of the opinion that it was "a true-to-original film adaptation of the world-famous short novel of the same name by Ernest Hemingway, which is particularly impressive due to the excellent embodiment of the old fisherman by Spencer Tracy".

Awards

synchronization

The German dubbed version was created in 1958 by Deutsche Mondial Film GmbH.

role actor Voice actor
Santiago Spencer Tracy Hans Hinrich
Martin Harry Bellaver Ernst Constantine
teller - Mathias Wieman

Further film adaptations of the novel

Ernest Hemingway's novel was adapted for television in 1990 with Anthony Quinn in the lead role . Directed by Jud Taylor . In 1999 the animated short film The Old Man and the Sea was released , which is also based on Hemingway's original and for which Alexander Petrow, who comes from Russia, received an Oscar in the category “Best Animated Short Film” .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Old Man and the Sea script info at TCM - Turner Classic Movies (English)
  2. ↑ a b The old man and the sea at film.at
  3. ^ A b Romano Tozzi: Heyne Filmbibliothek Spencer Tracy - His Film - His Life ,
    Copyright Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, 1979, pp. 154–157, ISBN 3-453-86009-8 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i The Old Man and the Sea (1958) Articles bei TCM (English)
  5. ↑ The old man and the sea. In: prisma.de . Retrieved March 24, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Leland Hayward: The Old Man and the Sea (USA). In: Der Spiegel No. 45/1958 of November 5, 1958.
  7. ↑ The old man and the sea. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 7, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  8. ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 690/1958 on the film The old man and the sea .
  9. ↑ The old man and the sea. In: Cinema . Hubert Burda Media , accessed on March 24, 2019 .
  10. ↑ The old man and the sea see page moviepilot.de (with original trailer).
  11. ↑ The old man and the sea cf. synchrondatenbank.de. Accessed August 31, 2019.
  12. ↑ The old man and the sea. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous index , accessed on June 7, 2017 .