There were mixed responses to the fact that The Artist won Best Picture at last Sunday's Oscar awards as some sort is as a great film while others thought it was a fad. However isn't the greatest marker of an award winning film longevity? So films I have watched such as Gone with the Wind and Casablanca are still watched today but others such as 1956 winner Marty is now a film that barely anybody knows which is a shame. Ernest Borgnine also won the Best Actor Oscar for playing the titular character a heavy-set butcher who is the only bachelor in his family with all of his younger brothers and sisters having flown the nest after getting married. The opening scene shows us perfectly of the community's feelings about Marty as his customers, who he is perfectly civil to, tell him he should be ashamed of himself for not having got married yet. His mother convinces him to go with his friend to a ballroom where he feels out of his depth and none of the girls want to dance with him because of his size. He then gets approached by a caddish fellow who wants to pay him to look after his plain date because he has had a better offer. Marty is disgusted by this offer but later approaches Clara and the two begin dancing and spend the night walking around the city. They discover they have a lot in common as they are both looked down on by the opposite sex so essentially they find solace in each other. However Marty's friends and mother who all meet Clara try and disuade him from calling her the next day but mainly for their own selfish reasons so the question is will he try and make a date with the only girl who has ever made him happy?
Even though I'd never heard of it you can see the influence in Marty through a lot of films featuring male protagonists from The Apartment, which would win Best Picture five years later, to the Oscar nominated male menopause movies of Alexander Payne. At the heart of this film is the central performance from Ernest Borgnine who is able to convey Marty's friendliness and also his heartbreak in equal measure we get the feeling that this is a decent guy who is just misunderstood by a lot people. However Borgnine would be nothing without director Delbert Mann or especially screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky who also got Oscars for this piece. Of the other cast members I thought Betsy Blair was a great Clara some would call her mousy but she really comes out of herself after her initial meeting with Marty. I also enjoyed Esther Mincotti and Augusta Ciolli as Marty's mother and aunt with these two old Italian women representing a different time and the two scenes in which they both feature are terribly moving and funny in equal measure as I suppose is the film itself. I suppose there are many reasons that Marty hasn't stood the test of time maybe because it's a fairly quiet film and it's one of the shortest Best Picture winners of all time but perhaps some people feel it dated. But for me this is a great little character study and maybe go as far as to say that this is a forgotten gem which got me wondering will we be saying the same thing about The Artist in 56 years time?
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