Obsessed With Film

Greatest Movie Scenes #76 - MARTY

Ah, the sorrow and sadness of being single. It’s possible that no motion picture has managed to illustrate the loneliness and despair felt by the unloved of the world better than 1955’s Marty. The story of Ernest Borgnine’s titular bachelor and his attempts to find romance, Delbert Mann’s film is genuinely moving and justifiably secured four Academy Awards thanks to its truly touching realism-rooted narrative.

Embodying both warm character and tremendous sadness, Borgnine got the Best Actor gong by giving audiences an underdog hero you can’t fail to care - and possibly cry - for. Throughout the film you just want to give the lovable lug a hug as he suffers under his own brutal self-loathing and the critiques of his family and friends (“Hey Marty, when you gonna get married? You oughta be ashamed of yourself”). The dialogue is deft and delightful, but it’s the superbly stirring performance of Borgnine that makes the movie such an empathetic masterpiece.

The scene in which Marty’s traditionalist Italian-American mother tries to encourage him to go out to a dancehall and find a girlfriend provides an excellent example of the film’s charm and emotional depth, as well as Borgnine’s heartfelt characterisation. For anyone who’s ever felt like a loser doomed to walk the Earth alone, the beautiful black-and-white New York story of Marty makes great company and offers an uplifting ray of light to all the socially-awkward misfits lucky enough to see it.

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categories - Greatest Scenes, Marty

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