Marty ***** (1955, Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair, Esther Minciotti) – Classic Movie Review 5050

Director Delbert Mann’s simple, kind-hearted and affecting 1955 drama triumphed at the 1956 Academy Awards, winning four of the most important Oscars, including Best Picture for producer Harold Hecht and Best Actor for Ernest Borgnine. Borgnine also won the Golden Globe for Best Actor and Bafta for Best Foreign Actor. Mann won the Palme d’Or at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.

It is arguably Borgnine’s finest hour in a very long career in the movies (though he had many), playing Marty Piletti, the simple, homely, middle-aging Bronx Italian butcher who thinks that he has got no chance in love but in any case still forces himself to go out and look for it.

Betsy Blair is almost as good as Clara Snyder, the shy, lonely spinster schoolmarm who comes into his life after he is goaded by his mother into going to the Stardust Ballroom one Saturday night. Blair won the Bafta for Best Foreign Actress. And Esther Minciotti scores strongly too as the overbearing Italian mother, Mrs Piletti.

The film is notable for screen-writer Paddy Chayefsky’s expert, easy way with everyday speech (it was originally a TV play) and Mann’s compelling direction. They won 1956 Oscars too – for Best Director and Best Screenplay.

Also in the cast are Joe Mantell, Karen Steele, Jerry Paris, Joe De Santis, Frank Sutton, Augusta Ciolli, James Bell, John Beradino, Nick Brkich, Marvin Bryan, Charles Cane, Walter Kelley, John Milford, Silvio Minciotti, Robin Morse, Frank Sutton, Minerva Urecal and Alan Wells.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5050

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