After having read the Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea" as a book in class, we also watched the film which was made afterwards because of the story's enormous popularity. As always, there are some ways in which the book differs from the film as well as the fact that they have several things in common. Taking into consideration that this novel was Hemingway's last desperate attempt at breaking through after all his previous narratives flopped I thought that the film might be different from the movie indeed because he might've wanted to bring the story into perfection in this way. Also I assumed it to be very boring to spend a whole film showing how one single man overcomes his mental and physical problems and eventually manages to catch a
When the old man then eventually returns, all the friction is gone and they live happily ever after. The second important difference is that in the film the old man has been given a daughter, who is already married, has two children and lives in the nearby city. She visits Santiago on the eve before he sails out to catch the marlin, and tries to persuade him to come and join her and her family in the city where life's better, cleaner etc. But Santiago, stubborn as he is, wants to stay and have one more try and so his daughter leaves, obviously taking offence. Two days later, when Santiago hasn't returned for the night, she visits the village again and is brought into contact with Hemmingway and his wife through Manolin. They all feel like acting except for Manolin who has all faith in the old man. And because they don't know how to act they wait, worry and think. Those scenes are shown every now and then, mostly after the old man's dreams about the lions on the beach. In this way the film is made more varied because of there are now two parallel storylines and other things you are focused on except for the old man: his family and godfather. Besides that new characters are added to the film there are no important differences, so let's have a look at the similarities between the book and the film. The plot and storyline of the book and film are similar; the additional