Marty

Ernest Borgnine stars in this 1955 romantic comedy about an Italian-American butcher searching for love. This sleeper hit garnered Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director (Delbert Mann). Betsy Blair co-stars, and Esther Minciotti and Augusta Ciolli are excellent as Marty's widowed mother and aunt. Joe Mantell, Jerry Paris, and Karen Steele are featured. 90 minutes. No subtitles.

The thing about this film that makes it so appealing is that it is about ordinary people, their lives, concerns, hopes and loves. Plain, ordinary people can have a fine romance. The first kiss is one of the great love scenes in film history. A kiss meant a lot in those days. My father and mother were of that generation, as were my wife's father and mother. No one in either family was involved in the mob. 

 

Most of that generation were ordinary hard-working people who managed to make the difficult transition from the Old World to the New. No one ever did a better job of telling their story than playwright Paddy Chayefsky, and no one ever did a better job of portraying them than Ernest Borgnine did in Marty.

I should also mention the cinematography of Joseph LaShelle, one of the great cameramen of Hollywood's Golden Age. His use of black and white contrasts gives this film a noir look, and no one ever employed close ups any better. ###

Betsy Blair and Ernest Borgnine