Marty (1955)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

I'll tell you why so serious

Best movie ever!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Almost beyond hope of ever finding love, a working-class Bronx butcher meets a young lady at a dance and they fall in love. That's it - it's that simple, but out of this simplicity is crafted a wonderful, real, moving film about you, me and the people we know. Borgnine, in the role of a lifetime, is superb and Blair is almost his equal. They're two lonely hearts desperate for someone in their lives. Their scenes together are so marvelous that they make us care. We WANT to see them find happiness. If that isn't great acting, I don't know what is. It is also a credit to Chayefsky's fabulous script. What a perfect little gem of a movie.

There has never been a pair of leading actor and actress with better romantic chemistry than Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair. They amplify each others emotion. Mary's loving relationship with his mother is also shown greatly. This movie communicates the stress of finding the love of your life in a heartfelt way. Their are certain points where scenes drag on too long. The awkwardness of the ballroom scene is perfectly timed but the out on the town scene seems to take too long. This movie does seem too simple at times. As if the characters are just going through the motions of life without a purpose but that is also the point of the film. This film has a hard time balancing the realistic feel of the story with monotony. But the chemistry between the lead characters draws it all together.

Marty (1955) was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Delbert Mann. Ernest Borgnine plays Marty Piletti, a Bronx butcher. He's intelligent and capable, but he sacrificed his ambitions to help support his family. Marty has a large extended family, but the people we meet are his mother, played by Esther Minciotti, his mother's sister--Aunt Catherine-- (Augusta Ciolli), and his cousin Tommy, played by Jerry Paris.The primary plot involves Marty and his friend Angie (Joe Mantell). Both of them are in their 30's, but their wheels are spinning and they're going nowhere socially. Most of their dialog involves one of them asking the other, "Whaddya wanna do tonight?" The answer is invariably, "I dunno. Whaddya you wanna do?" Marty dreams of finding a woman to love and marry, but the magic never happens. He's under intense pressure from his mother and his family to marry, but he has to find the girl first.The secondary plot involves Marty's family. This is a weaker effort on the part of the writer and director. Jerry Paris as Aunt Catherine's son Tommy (Marty's cousin) appears to be a decent actor, but his character is cut out of cardboard. Karen Steele as Tommy's wife, Virginia, is too beautiful for the character she plays. And, like Tommy, she hasn't been given a great role.The primary plot progresses when Marty meets Clara (Betsy Blair). We have to suspend disbelief and accept the fact that Clara isn't beautiful. (If she were cast as a beautiful woman, the plot wouldn't work.) She's unmarried and alone, because everyone who sees her perceives her as "a dog." Of course, Blair was beautiful. But, in the context of this movie, she's not attractive.So, the main plot follows Marty and Clara as they begin to understand themselves and each other. It's a beautiful love story. Just because the movie takes place in the Bronx, it doesn't mean that the characters can't have the same intense emotions that Romeo and Juliet have in Verona.I saw this movie when it was released, in 1955, and loved it. I saw it again yesterday on DVD, and I loved it even more. I'm not alone in my beliefs that this was a great film--it won four Academy Awards--Best Picture, Best Actor (Borgnine), Best Director, and Best Writing/Screenplay. It was nominated for four more Academy Awards--Best Supporting Actor (Joe Mantell as Angie), Best Supporting Actress (Betsy Blair), Best Cinematography (B/W) and Best Art Director-Set Director (B/W).Not only was this picture considered a great movie in its day, but it wears very well. The automobiles may look primitive, but the plot is sophisticated, complex, and is as true today as it was 60 years ago. Any movie from the 1950's will look better on a large screen than a small one, but this movie worked really well on DVD. If you haven't seen it, now's the time to view it. It's an incredible film, and you won't be disappointed.Note: Betsy Blair came to Rochester NY to accept an award at Eastman House. In the Q&A portion of the evening, I was able to ask her a question: "How did you manage to look like a 'dog' when you were so beautiful?" She said, "Makeup and costume helped. However, I'm an actress, and I was doing my job."

Boy... I was not expecting this.I gave this a good rating, but watching this was like a stab in the heart. Right from the start I was just so upset with this. What a shitty world these people live in. I could relate with the main characters right off the bat, which I guess was the point, but everything felt so mean-spirited, so pushy and superficial and just damn mean--calling women dogs, turning down Marty for his appearance, basing peoples' success on their ability to hold down jobs and who marries whom, and everything in between.But! BUUUUT... it slowly returned to something resembling real life once the two main characters met. Then from there on out things got so much better. They were so cute together I cried so much, holy crap. The characterization of Marty, especially, got me pretty hard. What a nice guy, so full of heart, even when people asked him to go with other girls when he had Clara with him. Needless to say I could relate to some extent, and it was so nice and refreshing.One of the issues I had with it was that we never get to see a lot of Clara's back story, and whenever we did it was about other men in her life. I wish we had more to go on with her, but at the same time I could tell that there was a lot of character with her. It felt like her shyness was enough of a clue of how she was as a person.That, and in general I felt like they handled these two very well. They were different people, people who didn't base their values in life off of the general social norms, and I liked that. It was cliché, but it was really nice to see in a movie from the 50's.I was genuinely surprised with this movie, and didn't expect it to be anything more, but I was happy that it ended up being just that.