Never say die.

• Author: Gehring, Wes D.
• Position: REEL WORLD - Film adaptations about people who do not easily give up

THE FIRST MOVIE I remember seeing in a theater was John Sturges' adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novella, "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958, with Spencer Tracy in the title role). Fittingly, I saw this parable about an aging fisherman's ongoing battle against the elements with my grandfather, who, as a farmer and survivor of the Depression, also knew a great deal about battling the elements. Moreover, Hemingway's fisherman was shadowed by a young boy, the role I had assumed in my grandfather's life. Many other things about the film resonate with me, starting with the old man's central mantra (at the core of all of Hemingway's work), "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." How could this movie not have made an impression upon me?

As a movie historian, I now realize the picture gifted me with another legacy--an appreciation for films where characters spend prolonged periods in self-reflecting isolation. The catalyst might range from a quest to a battle for survival. Not surprisingly, such cerebral sequences represent a special challenge to be cinematic. Consequently, after Hemingway's "Old Man" hooks his giant marlin and is towed farther and farther out to sea, Sturges utilizes some standard movie devices to tell this singular story.

For instance, there are Tracy voiceovers from the novella that earned a Nobel Prize for Literature (1954). Sturges also makes effective use of periodic cutaways. These startling transitions often are of lions in Africa--a frequent subject of the sometimes drowsing fisherman. Most significantly, however, Tracy's character is given a nontraditional character at which to voice his questions about life--the great fish pulling him deeper into the Gulf Stream.

Prolonged sequences of such cinematic self-reflection are not the norm, yet they hardly are rare. For instance, there is director Billy Wilder's depiction of the first solo nonstop trans-Atlantic flight in "The Spirit of St. Louis" (1957, with Jimmy Stewart as Charles Lindbergh). Like Tracy, Stewart gives a tour de force performance, ably assisted by Wilder's filmmaking, including Stewart voiceovers inspired by Lindbergh's 1954 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of the same name. In addition, there are several flashbacks, which further flesh out Lindbergh's past, ranging from his barnstorming flying circus days, to an amusingly slapstick fast attempt to solo. Stewart also has a nonhuman sidekick with whom to philosophize--a stowaway fly. Ironically, however...