Marty, at just
over 90 minutes long, is the shortest Best Picture winner in history[1],
but it’s also one of the most enjoyable, surprising movies I’ve watched so far
during The Oscar Project. It was the first of three films written by Paddy
Chayefsky to win the Best Screenplay Oscar (the others being The Hospital and Network). Only Woody Allen has matched that feat.
And the writing was pitch-perfect. If you’ve seen Network, a masterpiece in its own right,
you’ll understand what this man was capable of. He knew how to hit exactly the
right notes at every moment.
Until this point, no winner has had a smaller scale. In the
early years of the award, of course, the Academy tended to favor sprawling,
drawn-out epics. The tide has begun to turn a little bit in recent years, but
even next year’s winner, Around the Worldin 80 Days, has a gigantic scope. In this sense, Marty sticks out like a sore thumb.
The film takes place over just two days, and the vast
majority of it on one night. Ernest Borgnine plays Marty Piletti, a 34-year-old
unmarried butcher, in one of the best acting performances I’ve seen so far in
the project. He lives with his mother, who constantly badgers him with
questions about when he’s getting married. So too do his customers at the
butcher shop. He hangs out with the same group of friends, doing the exact same
things, every Saturday night.
And what’s more, he’s pretty much accepted it. It’s not
necessarily that he enjoys it, but he’s given up hope for anything better. His
mother, a nice, well-meaning Italian lady, wants him to get married, though.
All his brothers are married, after all. On Saturday night, she convinces him
to go to a dance club she heard about through his brother. Maybe he’ll meet
somebody nice.
After finally relenting and agreeing to go, he finds that he
does meet somebody nice. They get
along very well and spend all night together, until she has to go home. He
tells her he’ll call after church on Sunday.
 |
| I'd hardly call her a "dog." |
Here I need to point out a flaw in the plot. Marty’s
friends, who ran into him and his new friend, are convinced that she’s a “dog.”
It’s no good for his reputation for him to be seen with somebody so ugly. Only
in a movie universe, though, would she be considered ugly. Maybe she’s not a
beauty queen, but she’s in no way, shape, or form ugly.
Meanwhile, his mother is having her own doubts. If Marty
starts dating this girl, he’ll want to move out of their old house, find
somewhere nicer. She likes her house and has no intention of going anywhere, so
she also tells him not to see her anymore. Now that his entire social network
is against him, what choice does he have?
I’ll go ahead and say that things work out in the end (it
seems), and it looks like Marty will finally be happy, at least for a little
while. Marty is such a fundamentally good guy, although he does have his flaws,
that you genuinely feel glad for him. He’s so different from the typical
protagonists of the era, who are expected to be handsome, bold, and confident.
Marty is none of those things. He’s the underdog, the
feel-good story. We all know people like Marty. Some of us actually are like
Marty. He’ll never be on a list of great movie heroes, but I know I’ll never
forget him.
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