The Old Man and the Sea (1958)

Best movie of this year hands down!

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

The acting in this movie is really good.

4/21/18. Even with the stellar casting of Tracy as the old man, this movie was just way too depressing and long. The poor man appeared delirious most of the time battling the elements as well as the sharks out to eat up his catch. That's the essence of this movie.

Many of Ernest Hemingway's stories have been transferred to film. Some of them have been very successful and deserve to be called classics. This is not one of those productions, however.It all started when someone thought Hemingway's book would make a great film. It probably could. But for now the best-laid plans have been set aside for a lack of action and excessive voice-over narration. Thirty-minutes into this belabored affair, one scratches his head and asks: why are the producers paying Spencer Tracy to read us the entire book, when he is a skilled performer and should be able to act it out? This story deserves more than a stationary old man in a boat submerged in an artificially painted sea.

Guess who's coming to dinner,,,,,,,if that one put a lump in your throat, this one will, too. The fisherman's love of the sea, his love for "the boy" and his desire to keep doing what he has always done. Harder at his age, but still his joy. I think we see an old soul in "the boy" and a lost art in Spencer Tracy.His time on the sea, alone, was so beautiful and his determination should make us all feel a little wimpy for complaining that minor aches and pains keep us, at times, from our appointed duties. His love for his craft does not lessen with his age or abilities. Every young reader should be required to read Hemingway...especially this one. Every old reader should read it again............or just watch this film It is very true to the spirit of the novel.

I'm dismayed by the discussion on IMDb relating to reactions to this film by people of today's generations.Sorry, but maybe the youth of today actually know a thing or two about story, and about film, because they have available to them the sum total of human artistic product. They aren't limited to just what certain folks deem appropriate. Sure, if Old Man And The Sea was one of the few things you could access for entertainment back in the day, you might be impressed by it. Well, life goes on, and some of today's classics will be tomorrow's rubbish. That is how it must be.And guess what? Old Man And The Sea, at least as filmed for 1958, IS rubbish. How can you justify a scene in which a spear is thrown INTO THE OPEN WOUND that it is supposed to yet make? How you can you justify a scene where a line is pulled tight, attached at both ends above the water (boat and fish) and yet the line goes straight down into the depths? Even taking into account the usual curve of a line such as this, it makes no sense. And Spencer Tracy as a Cuban? It's too much to bear.If you can't film it, don't film it.The other annoying thing about this film is the narration. If this was books-on-tape, or descriptive-video, there might be a justification for it. But it's just absurd, annoying, lazy, and pretentious. There are better ways.