Marty is one of those films that a lot of us have heard
about but not many nowadays have seen. It won four Oscars (Best Picture, Best
Actor, Director, and Screenplay) and was nominated for four more - and 1955 was a pretty good year for movies. I
myself had never seen it, and so the recent passing of its unlikely star,
Ernest Borgnine, was reason enough to dig it up and take a look. I liked what I
saw. Marty is a small movie with a
simple story - a little domestic drama about a lonely working class guy. But it
packs a wallop because the story has so much compassion and a lot of heart.
Marty was a departure for Borgnine, who up until then was
typecast as a bad guy, a heavy, a gangster type – in supporting roles. His
Marty Piletti, on the other hand is a 34 year old butcher, an all around decent
fellow, living with his Ma. All of his siblings are married; in fact just last
weekend (as the story begins), Marty’s youngest sister got hitched in a big
wedding; and the relatives and Marty’s neighbors are constantly asking, “So
when are you gonna get married,
Marty?” or worse, “Whatsa matter with you?.”
But Marty is self-consciously unsuccessful with the ladies, and has
resigned himself to a fated bachelorhood.
Then of course he meets someone.
Borgnine is a heavy-set, Italian guy with somewhat coarse features, and the
story is set in an era, and a New York neighborhood, that extols machismo or
perhaps cool suavity; but his Marty is a sweet, gentle, unassuming man. He is
neither suave nor particularly cool; rather, he is unglamorous and plainspoken.
We like him. His family and his buddies like him, too; they just don’t
understand him. Marty feels no one understands him. Until he meets a girl a
little like him.
Although the focus is clearly on the title character, Marty
is also an ensemble work, and all the other actors, mostly relative unknowns,
are excellent. The screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, gives them some great lines
and wonderful set pieces to work in, and these scenes, along with Borgnine’s
charm, are what set this picture apart, and are what you’ll remember and talk
about after the lights come up. There’s the scene with Marty and his best
friend Angie (Joe Mantell) where they’re trying to make a plan for Saturday
night, knowing all along it’ll be as dreary and uneventful as all the other
Saturdays. There are a couple of boffo
scenes with Marty’s cousin Tommy (Jerry Paris) and his wife Virginia (beautiful
Karen Steele), one in particular where they are fighting about Virginia’s insistence
that Tommy’s dreary, gloomy,interfering mother, Marty’s Aunt Catherine (Augusta
Ciolli), move out of their home. And every scene with the two “old” widowed Italian
sisters Aunt Catherine and Marty’s mother, Theresa (Esther Minciotti) is
terrific. [Catherine to Theresa, complaining
of being “thrown out” of her son and daughter-in-law’s apartment: These are
the worst years, I tell you. It's going to happen to you. I'm afraid to look in
a mirror. I'm afraid I'm gonna see an old lady with white hair, just like the
old ladies in the park with little bundles and black shawls waiting for the
coffin. I'm fifty-six years old. And what am I gonna do with myself?] [Theresa
to Catherine: Where you go, rain go.
Someday you gonna smile, we gonna have a big holiday!]
When Marty goes to the Stardust Ballroom and meets Clara
(Betsy Blair), as unglamorous and ordinary looking as himself, there follows a
magical sequence in which the two find common ground, dancing, walking, having
a late supper at a diner, while the usually tongue-tied Marty garrulously,
happily, excitedly pours out his life story to this wonderful new person, and
she drinks it up like he’s the most interesting person in the world – which to
her, in that moment, he undoubtedly is.
Marty’s exuberance, after taking Clara home, is so infectious, it
brought a smile to my face. And, in the next scene, as Clara joyfully describes
to her surprised parents how she just met a fellow, yet another smile snuck in.
There are complications. The course of true love never did
run smooth, as the saying goes. But here
it’s also a journey of self-discovery for Marty, and a warmhearted lesson about what’s truly important in life.
Marty’s a classic movie. Get it. Watch it.
On DVD, available from
Netflix. Also available from Xfinity
OnDemand and Amazon Instant Video.
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