Marty - The Oscar Project Part XXVIII

The 1955 film “Marty” is best known to me as Ernest Borgnine’s best performance and is what gave him real credibility as an actor. This was curious to me as I have always viewed Borgnine as just a silly old man, so I was interested to see where he got his Oscar from. Similar to “On the Waterfront”, which won the previous year, “Marty” is really about the performance of one guy. But the question is does can a movie based on the performance of a guy who’s career didn’t take the same path as Brando hold up today.

“Marty” is about a butcher named Marty. He is a bachelor in his 30’s that lives with his mother and is socially awkward. One night he goes out to the clubs with his friends and ends up spending the evening with a lady who is almost as socially awkward as he is. They hit it off and the next day when he plans on calling her, he gets advice from everyone around him that he shouldn’t because of a variety of reasons. Eventually at the end he brushes everyone off and makes the call. And that is where the movie ends. This plot is okay but it is fairly simple. For the movie going audience of today not enough is really going on here. While “On the Waterfront” focused heavily on Brando’s character, there were others there, the entire plot of the movie didn’t hinge on his performance and he was able to make a good film a great one. Here, without Borgnine’s performance, the movie would have nothing else.

From an acting standpoint I find that Ernest put in a solid effort, but I didn’t find it to be anything spectacular. Except for the last speech, which was pretty good, his character lacked a lot of emotion. I realize that this is the way the character is meant to be portrayed and that it is really more of a script problem than anything Borgnine had control over. But a solid performance can’t carry a movie full of one note characters that you’re not supposed to like because the film is designed to make you root for Marty. It leaves very little to write about.

In the end I don’t think that this movie could have been made the same way today. Audiences now need more going on in a movie, and a more charismatic lead character. A character like Marty would most likely we relegated to a supporting character and a subplot which may sound unfortunate, but that is the way the world is. “Marty” gets 2.5 out of 5 stars.