Marty

In an age when films vie for Oscar consideration by assembling ensembles of ultra-dedicated and acclaimed actors, carefully selecting properties that will attract the right kind of attention, and pioneering new variations in a sea of cliches, it's hard to imagine a film like Marty even getting noticed let alone winning the Best Picture Oscar. And yet, it's one of the most enjoayble and unpretentious Best Film winners I've ever seen. It's a breath of fresh air, as much so now as it would've been back in 1955.

The 1950s were ushering in a new age of cinematic realism in Hollywood... the studio system was breaking down and taking the glamourous stars of the 30s and 40s with it. Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Ronald Colman, Ginger Rogers - all these golden era stars were starting to show their age and a new generation of idols were blazing onto cinema screens, bringing with them a new wave of acting; the method performance. But even with this heightened sense of a more realistic style of filmmaking (primarily pushed by directors like Elia Kazan), these films still featured actors and actresses who were beautiful in the most traditional of senses (Marlon Brando, James Dean, Eva Marie Saint, etc). So a film like Marty, produced and released in the mid-1950s and starring Ernest Borgnine (whose looks were positively pugilistic at best), still didn't really have any business getting made in this time and place. And yet it was, and as a result it's an ironically beautiful film that succeeds against the odds (much like its titular character).

Marty (Ernest Borgnine) is a 34 year old Italian-American butcher resigned to bachelorhood. He has a good heart and he's lonely but he's also given up on trying to meet a girl because he's had enough rejection and heartache. He's sensitive but he's also socially awkward, and he has grown very tired of the pressure put on him by his community to start a family. He'd like nothing more than to get married, but Marty is also all too aware that he's quite an ugly man. He lives with his mother but he doesn't begrudge her for it, and it's only through boredom and depression that he continues to skulk at the edges of the singles scene. We all know guys like Marty, and this film is their patron saint.


Poor Marty! You really feel for this guy, he's such a good-natured fella and Borgnine completely owns this film. It's a truly complete performance, Borgnine is so nervous and polite and frustrated that your own heart will cringe and sing along with all his best and worst moments. I can't praise this film enough for simply being what it is - a realistic look at the 1950s meat market for ageing bachelors. It doesn't sugarcoat anything and the casting of Borgnine in the title role puts its credibility through the roof in ways that few other Hollywood films of this era touch. There's no concession to superficial box office appeal, it's just simple and unaffected storytelling and it shines all the brighter for it.

There's a subplot that runs alongside Marty's search for love that deals with his mother (Esther Minciotti) and her sister (Augusta Ciolli) anxiously contemplating their lives as widows without dependent children. At first I couldn't see the relevance of these sequences but it eventually feeds into the turning point that Marty must face at the film's climax. There comes a point when a man needs to stop listening to other people and just follow his heart, and Marty's dilemma is the step towards maturity that most people face at one point or another in their lives. It's in details like this that the films sidesteps the psychological pretentiousness that can infect these kinds of character studies. Marty is a likeable and wholly realistic creation (the film and the character) that will win your heart where other films fail due to a smart and sincere script. It's a script that unselfconsciously pre-empts the usual cynicism that romantic dramas tend to encourage.

DIRECTOR: Delbert Mann
WRITER/SOURCE: Paddy Chayefsky, based on his own previous script for a TV-movie.
KEY ACTORS: Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair, Joe Mantell, Jerry Paris, Esther Minciotti, Augusta Ciolli, Karen Steele

RELATED TEXTS:
- Paddy Chayefsky previous wrote Marty as a TV-movie of the same name, produced two years earlier with Rod Steiger in the title role.
- The film was loosely remade as the comedy-drama Only the Lonely in 1991, with John Candy in the lead role.
- After Marty, Borgnine would star in another film scripted by Chayefsky the following year, The Catered Affair.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Film, Best Actor (Ernest Borgnine), Best Director and Best Screenplay. Also nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Betsy Blair), Best Supporting Actor (Joe Mantell), Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography.
BAFTAs - won Best Foreign Actor (Borgnine) and Best Foreign Actress (Blair).
Cannes Film Festival - won OCIC Award and the Palm d'Or.
Golden Globes - won Best Actor - Drama (Borgnine).