I don’t really have a ton to say about Marty. It’s a fine film, but to me not an outstanding one. At 90 minutes, it’s the shortest film to ever win the Oscar for Best Picture, and it feels like they (to use a football term) left a lot of plays on the field. They could have pushed it to two hours and done a lot more in terms of exploring the relationship between Marty and his love interest, Clara. We spend nearly the entire second act with them on their date getting to know each other, but the challenges to their relationship feel tacked on. Thematically, there was an opportunity to make this about two lost souls who find each other, but the film wrapped up so suddenly that we, as an audience don’t have an opportunity to digest what’s happening.

Now that’s not to say that it’s all bad. It’s actually a nice little story that’s set up very well and has some elements that are expertly paid off in Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay. We’ll get to those later, but the point that I’m getting at is that, while this is a nice film and a feel-good film and an entertaining film, I’m not sure if it’s a Best Picture-worthy film.

Marty is about a 34-year old butcher named Marty Piletti, who has been looking for a girl every Saturday night of his life, but is too shy, too fat and too ugly to find one. So he hangs out with his friends, he lives with his mother and he watches as all of his younger siblings get married and start their own families. Marty receives constant criticism from his customers, his friends and his mother that he needs to find a wife and start a family for himself. We see throughout that Marty has resigned himself to the life of a bachelor, especially when his cousin Tommy and his wife Virginia come to the house asking if Marty’s Aunt Catherine can move out of their house and in with Marty and his mother, who is Aunt Catherine’s sister. Marty agrees, much to everyone’s delight. Finally, at the behest of his mother he goes with his friend Angie to a dance hall. Angie gets a girl to dance with him, but no one wants to dance with Marty until he meets Clara. She’s not particularly attractive but he feels bad for her when guys only want to dance with her as a joke, so he asks her to dance and she reluctantly agrees.

They then spend the entire second act walking around Manhattan and talking and falling in love. They catch up with Angie, who is angry with Marty for deserting him and he gives Clara that brush off. He then takes her home so that they can have a bite to eat before he takes her home to Brooklyn since the busses run so infrequently at night. Marty’s mother comes home and she’s delighted to meet Clara until they discuss the situation with Aunt Catherine. Clara feels that it’s reasonable for Tommy and Virginia to want their own space and mothers should respect their sons’ privacy once they’re married. This progressive point of view doesn’t sit well with Marty’s mother since it means she’ll likely be kicked out of the house if these two get married. Sensing the tension in the room, Marty takes Clara home and tells her that he had such a good time that he want to see her again the next night, and she tells him that she’ll wait for his call.

Unfortunately for Marty, neither his mother nor Angie likes Clara because they each see her as a threat to take Marty away from them. This is where the film lost me because it set up for a great dramatic third act with Marty’s mother and Angie trying to convince Marty that Clara is no good for him, but ended completely abruptly with Marty telling off Angie and then going to a payphone to call Clara and ask for another date. That’s it. That’s how it ends.

It was an unfortunate ending to what was otherwise a really nice film. Ernest Borgnine won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Marty, and it’s a worthy performance. Two years after a terrific supporting role in From Here to Eternity, Borgnine was leading an Oscar-winning film playing a character that couldn’t have been more different from the bullying, racist and sadistic Sgt. Fatso. Marty is a kind, gregarious man with a good work ethic and an even better heart. His problem is that he puts everyone else’s needs ahead of his own and that will never allow him to achieve full happiness. He’s also so afraid of getting hurt that he won’t take a chance on being happy because he thinks it’s out of his reach. Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and director Delbert Mann did a wonderful job of creating in Marty a hero with depth and faults that allowed him to come across as a real person to whom the rest of us could relate. He was also a character that we could root for and we honestly hope that he finds happiness with Clara in the end.

There was one other aspect of the screenplay that Chayefsky handled very well. Mrs. Piletti has wanted nothing but for Marty to find a woman that he can marry. So when he finds Clara, Mrs. Piletti should be nothing but happy with this turn of events. The problem is that wouldn’t be terribly dramatic so they needed to add an element to the story that would make Clara unacceptable to Mrs. Piletti. That aspect that they added was Clara’s progressive views on Italian mothers not living with their sons once their sons are married. This is a big problem for her, as she sees it as a threat to her well-being and her relationship with Marty. Also, by setting up the issue with Aunt Catherine and having Marty already agree to let her live with them, the stakes are raised even more. Plus, the only woman that Marty has ever had in his life is his mother and he’s pretty much done everything she’s ever asked him to do. In this way, Mrs. Piletti becomes a very effective antagonist as she is ironically the one who now stands most directly in the way of Marty being happy.

That’s why it’s such a bummer when they don’t do more to expand this story motif. The film makers did a great job of setting us up for an emotional and dramatic third act and they didn’t give it to us. And again, at 90 minutes they had plenty of time to create that third act and potentially make this one of the greatest and most memorable romantic comedies of all time. Unfortunately that’s not the direction they went, and I’m left with this film wondering what might have been. Yes, Marty won the Oscar for Best Picture, but it was largely a wasted opportunity as it could have been remembered as one of the great films of all time had they put a little more work into it. It could have been an emotional powerhouse had they given us 20 minutes of Marty struggling with what he wants versus what he thinks he wants. He thinks that he wants his life to stay the same and his mother and his best friend are guiding him to that place. What he really wants is to be happy with Clara and she wants to be with him as well. Had those forces had a better tug-of-war with a more satisfying showdown and climax, Marty could have been a film for the ages.

Did the Academy get it right?

As I mentioned in the second paragraph, I don’t view Marty as Best Picture-worthy. It was very successful and well-received the year it came out. In fact, it’s one of the most profitable films of all time. Of the films that were nominated against it, the only one I’ve seen is Mister Roberts, and I likely would have voted for that film over Marty, had I had a vote. What’s noteworthy to me, though, are the films that came out in 1955 and were not even nominated. East of Eden; Rebel Without a Cause; The Night of the Hunter; To Catch a Thief; The Seven Year Itch, and The Trouble With Harry, just to name a few. I would have voted for any or all of those films rather than Marty for Best Picture, as all of those films have taken a higher place in the film cannon. The reason for that is that they’re all better films and any of them would have been more worthy of winning Best Picture than Marty.