Review of Marty (1955) by Davey M — 26 May 2014

Chayefsky's script is brilliant, perfectly observing Marty's cultural milieu and social world, low-key and focused, with a willingness to observe the details and people on the periphery and some of the best moments coming from characters who couldn't even really be considered "supporting"--they contribute nothing to the plot, but basically exist as extras with lines, to add color and texture to the world.

Borgnine is exceptional in one of the defining performances of his career, and what makes the performance even more special is that it's sometimes hard to tell how much of this uncomfortableness-in-his-own-skin is the character and how much is the actor.

Indeed, the entire cast has an authenticity and an occasional, refreshing awkwardness that makes it feel almost as if the film had been populated by non-actors playing themselves. "Marty" is a wonderfully warm romantic drama, a rich and detailed observation of familial relationships and their accompanying pains and rewards, a movie that is content to allow its characters to simply talk and enjoy one another's company rather than breathlessly working to hurry to the next plot point, and a beautiful portrait of a world with which Hollywood wasn't particularly interested at the time, lower-middle-class Italian immigrants in New York.

As a portrait of Italian-American culture, the film feels, in many ways, as if it owes a greater debt to the neorealism of the Italian cinema over the past decade than it does to the American film of the time, and that takes it from a nicely-written romantic dramedy to something really special.