Originally a teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky, Marty was nominated for eight Academy Awards (winning for Best Picture) and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. “I’ve been looking for a girl every Saturday night of my life,” says lovelorn Bronx butcher Marty (Ernest Borgnine). Still living with his mother and resigned to a life of loneliness, he is over the moon when he meets shy schoolteacher Betsy Blair who reciprocates his feelings. However, to Marty’s surprise, his mother dislikes the girl and his friends put her down, and eventually he, too, begins to question his newfound love. –AFI
Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. (January 30, 1920 – November 11, 2007) was an American television and film director. He won the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty. It was the first Best Picture winner to be based on a television program, being adapted from a 1953 teleplay of the same name which he had also directed. Mann is also the only director other than Billy Wilder and Roman Polanski to win an Oscar for his direction and a Cannes Palme d’Or for the same film. From 1967 to 1971, he was president of the Directors Guild of America.
Mann was born in Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, the son of Ora (née Patton), a civic worker and teacher, and Delbert Martin Mann, Sr., a college professor. Mann graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. After school, he served with the U.S. Army Air Corps in WW II, then got discharged after service in the European theater. He then attended Yale Drama School… read more
i thought the nuances of blair's performance were one of the most endearing i've ever watched of an actress. i loved too that even though this was a love story, it spoke of all the themes of ny in that day.
A great picture about loneliness and not losing hope. Very funny, sad, and ultimately beautiful. Holds up well today.
An american classic story of loneliness and familial pressure to settle down and get married after one has somewhat passed the age of easily meeting someone. Chayefsky's script is full of undertoned insight but well rooted in the familiar. Great story, great dialoque and such humanistic performances by leads Borgnine and Blair. "college girls, let me tell you. that's one step from the street"...
A great and subtly comedy/drama about common people. Just as life it is, neither more nor less.
Max Goldberg, writing for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, has seen Paul Clipson "project films on a billowing screen under the stars; in
A tender love story between misfits. The movie is rather tranquil and sublte without heeps of drama thrown in your face or outrageous ongoings pushing the story forward. Instead, we get an insight… read review
Lovely little movie about defeated people discovering possibility. A little on-the-nose and simplistic at times, but those moments are balanced by others which reveal subtle power in both the performances… read review
Marty is set in the ultra conformist 50s and it’s interesting to see a film about family values and the pressure of getting married. Society has become so decadent since then, but there is still the… read review
