An Oscar-Profitable Animation of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Previous Man and the Sea” Painted on 29,000 Frames of Glass

Ernest Hemingway’s roman­tic adven­ture of man and mar­lin, The Previous Man and the Sea, has per­haps spent extra time on highschool recent­man Eng­lish learn­ing lists than any oth­er work of fic­tion, which could lead one to think about the nov­el as younger grownup fic­tion. However past the ebook’s abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate broad themes of per­se­ver­ance, braveness, and loss, it has an enchantment that additionally attain­es previous, wiz­ened males like Hemingway’s San­ti­a­go and younger, imag­i­na­tive boy­ish appren­tices like his Mano­lin. The 1952 novel­la rein­vig­o­rat­ed Hemingway’s profession, received him a Pulitzer Prize, and even­tu­al­ly con­tributed to his Nobel win in 1954. And luck­i­ly for all these highschool Eng­lish stu­dents, Hemingway’s sto­ry has lent itself to some wor­thy display adap­ta­tions, includ­ing the 1958 movie star­ring Spencer Tra­cy because the inde­fati­ga­ble Span­ish-Cuban fish­er­man and a 1990 ver­sion with the mighty Antho­ny Quinn within the function.

One adap­ta­tion that learn­ers of Hem­ing­manner would possibly miss is the ani­ma­tion above, a co-pro­duc­tion with Cana­di­an, Russ­ian, and Japan­ese stu­dios cre­at­ed by Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Alek­sander Petrov. Win­ner of a 2000 Acad­e­my Award for ani­mat­ed quick, the movie has as a lot enchantment to a spread of view­ers younger and previous as Hemingway’s ebook, and for a number of the similar causes—it’s cap­ti­vat­ing­ly vivid depic­tion of life on the ocean, with its lengthy peri­ods of inac­tiv­i­ty and quick bursts of utmost phys­i­cal exer­tion and con­sid­er­ready threat.

Each states professional­vide ample oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­plex char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and wealthy sto­ry­telling in addition to excit­ing white-knuck­le sus­pense. Petro­v’s movie illus­trates all of them, open­ing with photographs of San­ti­in the past’s sto­ries of his sea­far­ing boy­hood off the coast of Africa and stag­ing the dra­mat­ic con­checks between San­ti­a­go, his “broth­er” the mar­lin, and the sharks who devour his prize.

However the professional­duc­tion right here, not like Hemingway’s spare prose, makes a daz­zling dis­play of its tech­nique. For his The Previous Man and the Sea, Petrov—solely one in all a hand­ful of ani­ma­tors expert on this artwork—handpainted over 29,000 frames on glass (with assist from his son, Dmitri) utilizing slow-dry­ing oils. Petrov moved the paint along with his fin­gers to cap­ture the transfer­ment within the subsequent shot, and whereas the magazine­i­cal impact resem­bles a mov­ing paint­ing, the shoot­ing itself was very tech­no­log­i­cal­ly superior, involv­ing a spe­cial­ly con­struct­ed motion-cap­ture cam­period. Petrov and son started their paint­ing in 1997 and fin­ished two years lat­er, tak­ing to coronary heart a number of the classes of the ebook, it appears. The movie’s cre­ators, how­ev­er, fared wager­ter than The Previous Man’s professional­tag­o­nist, wealthy­ly reward­ed for his or her strug­gle. In addi­tion to an Oscar, the quick received awards from BAFTA, the San Diego Movie Fes­ti­val, and a hand­ful of oth­er pres­ti­gious inter­na­tion­al bod­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Faulkner’s Evaluation of Hemingway’s The Previous Man and the Sea (1952)

Watch a Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion of Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man”

Hem­ing­manner, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er: A Free Yale Course

The Nice Gats­by Is Now within the Pub­lic Area and There’s a New Graph­ic Nov­el

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian primarily based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness