Marty (1955)

“I've been looking for a girl every Saturday night of my life.”

            Ever since I started college I feel like my parents and some of my family have been pestering me about not having a boyfriend. Honestly I can tell you for the past four years of my life I have been happy without one… well I did have two boyfriends at different times and they turned out to be annoying as hell and they were around a few years ago. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go out with someone and have someone there to talk to and go out with. Then I shake my head and think what a burden that would be I cannot even handle myself let alone someone else. My parents think I have no life and are always bothering me about going out but they do not seem to realize that in order to go out I need money and I cannot spend a dime right now unless it is for gas for driving up to school three days a week. My thinking is that a guy will for me will come along when the time is right and as I said I am very happy without a boyfriend in my life.

            Anyway, you must be thinking what that little rant had to do with a review for the film Marty. Well the simple answer is I relate to the character Marty. I am not thirty-four years old with brothers and sisters that are already married but I can relate to people constantly asking him if he has a girl and telling him he should go out so he can meet people. And like Marty I come from an Italian which makes the whole non-boyfriend situation a little more stressful at times.

            Marty (Ernest Borgnine) has worked in a butcher shop for years. He has younger brothers and sisters that are married and have kids while he still lives at home with his mother. The three female customers he has all know him and ask him why he is not married yet and why he has not found a nice girl. After work Marty goes to the local diner and meets up with his friend Angie. They go back and forth asking what they want to do that night and neither one of them has a clue. Angie gives Marty the idea to call up two girls they had met a month before. When Marty calls the one girl she brushes him off. His mother keeps harping on him to go out so he can meet people when Marty has it and yells that he has been going out on Saturday nights for a long time and has not met anybody. For the sake of his mother he goes out to a dancehall.

            At the dancehall a man comes up to Marty saying he will him to pretend to be an old army buddy so he can dump the girl he is with on Marty. The guy blatantly says the girl he is with is a dog and wants to go off with a better looking girl he knows. Marty does not want to do it at first but then he sees what the idiot is doing and goes to the girl himself. The girl’s name is Clara (Betsy Blair) and she was set up with the idiot on a blind date. After the two guys go away she walks outside. Marty follows her and asks her to dance with him.

            Marty and Clara wind up walking around the city and talking for hours. Neither one has felt the feelings they feel for the other about anyone else before. Marty cannot stop talking and Clara just listens. They wind up at his house. His mother is not home she went to see her sister. Marty goes to kiss Clara but she pulls away. She tells him she really likes him. When he asks if he can call her tomorrow they kiss. Marty’s mother comes home and speaks with her son and Clara for a bit. The mother asks Clara a question and she does not really like the answer and bases her opinion on Clara mostly on her answer and the fact that she is not Italian. Marty brings Clara home and promises to call the next day. Clara tells her mother and father of her night and how this was a push for her to move on from living with them and to move on with being an adult.

            The next day everyone asks Marty what he sees in Clara. Angie met her and for some reason does not like her and calls her a dog. His mother keeps telling him she does not like Clara she is no good for him. Really his mother just does not want Marty to move out of the house and she does not want to end up like her sister who hates her daughter-in-law and sleeps on a couch in her son’s house. Marty lets everyone’s opinions influence him and he does not call Clara when he was supposed to. He goes out to a raucous street with a lot of bars and feels like an idiot for not calling Clara. He has just found a girl he really likes and one who really likes him and thinks what on earth is he doing for hanging around his friends when he has a girl waiting for him. At a bar Marty goes to a phone booth and gives Clara a call.

            I really liked how neither Ernest Borgnine nor Betsy Blair was particularly good looking people. They were normal grown up people who had not found that special person in their lives yet to settle down with. They just fit really nicely together and they did have a good chemistry.

            Marty is such a good sweet film. As I talked about and as you can see from the review I can relate to Marty and Clara as well. Everything in life takes time and this film shows that love does come along for people eventually. I liked how they were not conventionally good looking people that made the story hit closer to home and made it more interesting to watch. Marty is a different kind of film it is not one that you would ever believe won four Academy Awards including Best Actor for Ernest Borgnine and Best Screenplay. Marty was different for its time and is very relevant and different in today’s world. If you want to see a good film with a not so typical story and characters watch Marty. I guarantee there is at least one thing you will like about the film.