Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1958

The Contenders:

Paul Newman: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Tony Curtis: The Defiant Ones
Sidney Poitier: The Defiant Ones
Spencer Tracy: The Old Man and the Sea
David Niven: Separate Tables (winner)

Catch and Release

Film: The Old Man and the Sea
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I should probably start off talking about The Old Man and the Sea by saying that I am not a fan of the writing of Ernest Hemingway in general. I’m happy to say that a number of his short stories are fantastic and worth reading, but I’ve never liked his novels. A large part of this for me is that Hemingway couldn’t write a woman character to save his life an anything longer than a couple of pages. That’s not an issue with this film, since virtually the entire film is Spencer Tracy sitting by himself in a boat. This film has other problems, though, which we’ll get to soon enough.

Know going into this that this will likely be a pretty short review. There’s not a lot here to write about in terms of plot or interaction between characters. Aside from the opening few scenes and the very end, this really is literally what I said above. Santiago (Spencer Tracy) is an old fisherman in Cuba whose best days are long gone. When the movie begins, Santiago has not caught a real sizable fish for nearly three months. The boy (Felipe Pazos) who worked as his apprentice has been sent to another boat by his parents. Now working for a “lucky” boat, the boy still looks after Santiago, buying him food and sardines to use as bait.