Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. Marty is the twenty-eighth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. They say variety is the spice of life and that was never more true for the Academy voters than in the first half of the 1950s. Spectacle was often the name of the game between The Greatest Show on Earth’s larger than life depiction of the circus and the bombastic theatricality of An American in Paris. Gritty dramas found success as well with the historically epic From Here to Eternity and the politically charged On The Waterfront. 1955’s winner, Marty is a completely different tone.
Marty (Ernest Borgnine) is a kindhearted butcher in New York City. He spends his days regaling shoppers with stories of his siblings and their families and his evenings at the local watering hole or watching Hit Parade at home. Romantic at heart, but jaded by years of rejection, the 34 year old Marty has all but shut himself off to the possibility of finding love. On the verge of giving up entirely, his mother (Esther Minciotti) implores Marty to pay a visit to the Stardust Ballroom one more time. It’s there he meets Clara (Betsy Blair), a schoolteacher who is similarly unlucky in love. The two wallflowers hit it off across a whirlwind night in the Big Apple. Adapted from a teleplay of the same name, Marty feels slight in its 90 minute runtime compared to the epic scale of some contemporary winners. The film version adds to Clara’s character — although you might not know it given how little time the script affords her — and expands on the plot of Marty’s mom, which adds an interesting layer to the story. It’s a feel good charmer about seeing beyond the surface and following your own heart. Ernest Borgnine is really great and tonally unrecognizable to his somewhat vicious character in From Here to Eternity. His Marty has a gentile spirit and you can see his heart crack a little more with every rejection. He effectively captures that empty sort of feeling that accompanies a string of failures to launch and also the exuberance of connection that can fill you back up. Betsy Blair, on the other hand, plays her part well and emotionally but is given precious little to do. Most of her interactions with Marty highlight his awkward but endearing personality without much insight into her own struggles and insecurities. At the end of the day, the movie is not called Clara, but some extra depth to her character would have helped a lot. This is doubly apparent as Blair is one of those perfectly lovely Hollywood actresses playing “plain” that we are asked to believe is hideous. It’s a classic trope even now but in this particular case strains the believability of the core message. Even for the lopsided nature of the love story, Marty is a charming romance with just enough humor. So often movies like this try to load up on gimmicks to stretch out the story so there is something endearing about a simple connection between two wayward souls finding one another. That’s not to say the film is entirely vapid. Marty’s mother initially pushes him to find a girl but becomes hesitant after seeing her sister’s (Augusta Ciolli) challenging relationship with a daughter in law. Even so, the film is easily the slightest Best Picture winner to that point. To some extent, Marty suffers some in expectation setting. Not that all Best Picture winners are some tremendous achievement, many are not even good. Aside from quality, the expectation from the winners is something that leaves an indelible mark. Marty is a great bit of entertainment and recommendable to most anyone. It just feels too small to be the best film of the year. Now, that is in the scope of this Best Picture project. Marty is still a delight to watch and one of the more accessible films of that era for anyone looking to jump into old Hollywood. 7/10
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