THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (1958)
Label: Warner Archive
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 86 Minutes 59 Seconds
Audio: English DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: John Sturgess
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Felipe Pazos, Harry Bellaver
In director John Sturges' (Bad Day at Black Rock) quite faithful adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 1952 novella The Old Man and the Sea legendary actor Spencer Tracy (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) plays an old Cuban fisherman who has gone over two months without bringing home a catch, earning him derision from the other fisherman. On the 85th day he dutifully casts off in his modest fishing boat just before dawn and heads out to see, after a slow start he hooks into a whopper of a marlin. The fish is enormous and puts up an epic fight, for two days the man is pulled out to sea by the fish, which he eventually bests, but now 2 days from his home he faces other tribulations; his age, and marauding sharks attracted to the blood of the trophy marlin, which is now strapped over the port side of his small boat. The water erupts into a feeding frenzy with the old man beating the predators off as best he can with anything he can, but he's not quite able to preserve his prized catch.
The film is quite stagey in that it's basically a one-man show, there some scenes early on in Cuba and it closes there as well, but this is Spencer Tracy and center, or more aptly, in the middle of the ocean in a boat all by himself. He gives an earnest and sincere (Oscar-nominated) performance, his weather beaten old man is grizzled, craggy and has an indominable strong-as-iron spirit, refusing to let the creatures of the sea, weather or his age best him. As he struggles with the fish the line is wrapped tightly around his hands, rope-burning and tearing into his flesh, all the while he dreams of the African coast and lion cubs, and reminisces about his younger self besting a man in an epic arm wrestling match. The scenes of the old man at sea battling the marlin is achieved using stock footage of a fishing expedition and scenes of Tracy in a boat on a studio backlot water tank with rear projection and a backdrop - it's not the most convincingly realistic blending of movie trickery I've ever seen, but it worked for me. The obvious artifice of it adding a certain element to it that I liked quite a bit. The stock footage of a marlin on the line leaping out of the water and later scenes of a shark feeding frenzy add some action to the stagey execution as well, there's lot of narration and inner-monologue, which was welcomed. Greatly adding to the film are some fantastic location shoots from cinematographer James Wong Howe (Bell, Book and Candle) who captures the sun-drenched charm of Havana and Boca de Jaruco, Cuba with sunsets that seem like fairytales, and let's not forget a beautiful score by Dimitri Tiomkin which ended up taking home the Oscar that year.
Audio/Video: Old Man and the Sea (1958) debuts on Blu-ray from Warner Archive with a new 2023 1080p HD master from 4K scan of original camera negative, frame din the original 1.85:1 widescreen. It looks quite nice, probably too nice as now you can see the illusion of the backlot tank and the rear-projection background quite clearly, as well as the haloing outline around Tracy as he stands against the projections. The warm colors of James Wong Howe’s
cinematography look great, the orange and pins of the sunsets and the blues of the open sky and shine, with some modest clarity and depth, offering plenty of textures in Tracey's craggy face and rope-burned hands. The stock footage of the marlin fight is obviously lesser quality, and the Vaseline smeared lenses used during dream sequences and to perhaps obscure how bad the caught marlin effect was, are also detract. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual mono with optional English subtitles, dialogue by way of narration, spoken lines and inner monologues sound crisp and clean, and the Oscar winning score from Dimitri Tiomkin’s (Dial M for Murder) is nicely placed in the mix with a full-bodied representation.
Archival extras come by way of a 3-min Hemingway: The Legend and the Sea, consisting of footage shot by documentarian Allen Miner during a marlin fishing expedition with author Ernest Hemingway, originally shot for an unfinished documentary, plus a 2-minute Trailer for the film. The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original movie poster artwork.
Special Features:
- Behind the scenes featurette: "Hemingway: The Legend and the Sea" (3:04)
- Original Theatrical Trailer (1:43)
Screenshots from the Warner Archive Blu-ray:
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