Marty is a 1955 American romantic drama film directed by Delbert Mann in his directorial debut. The screenplay was written by Paddy Chayefsky, expanding upon his 1953 teleplay of the same name, which starred Rod Steiger in the title role.
Why It Rocks
This film marked the first time a television drama was adapted to the big screen. For context, the teleplay was the result of a relatively brief flowering of serious writing on television, a medium still feeling its way with audiences. While TV offered more visual possibilities than theater, it couldn't compete with film spectacles. As a result, TV was best suited for small-scale character sketches, stories with modest themes and low-key resolutions.
According to Chayefsky, he "set out in Marty to write a love story, the most ordinary love story in the world." He used an Italian ethnic setting because he had written about Jewish characters several times in a row. The main character, Marty Piletti, is a lonely, homely butcher. Audiences liked the story, as they were used to seeing shows about the 'winners', rather than the 'losers'. Viewers saw a little of themselves in its eponymous hero, an ordinary man with ordinary problems.
The film version of the story cemented Chayefsky’s reputation as a poet of the “little people,” despite his often condescending tone. He himself stated that he felt Marty in film form is a better play than it was on TV. Chayefsky moves his characters around like chess pieces, their conversations and interactions part of worked-out designs. He is the type of screenwriter who doesn’t let viewers think for themselves, one self-consciously proud of depicting “ugly” people, “real” people. Yet despite this, Hollywood's made films depicting troubled affairs of the little people from all the way back to the days of Mary Pickford including Broken Blossoms, Miss Lulu Bet, The Shop Around the Corner, and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Ernest Borgnine (an unlikely romantic lead, who's portrayed villains and scoundrels) and Betsy Blair provide incredible performances as Marty Piletti and Clara Snyder
The story's provided with touching realism as the main male and female protagonists build a relationship not of fairy tale romance but of mutual respect and affection, and contains nuanced dialogue. It's essentially a character-study between Marty Pilletti and Clara Snyder, two unremarkable lonely people who respect each other. He's a 30-something Italian-American butcher living in the Bronx with his mother and she's a shy schoolteacher. It may not push a lot of boundaries, but its an underdog story designed to lift spirits, and it doesn't aim to push lot of boundaries.
Like too few movies about city life, it establishes its sense of place without relying on iconic landmarks. For people tired of seeing the same side of New York on film, they'd be relived.
The film's success led to a flood of films based on television dramas such as Requiem for a Heavyweight, 12 Angry Men, The Rainmaker, The Bachelor Party, and The Catered Affair.
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