Marty, starring Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair, is a touching story from the 1950's about two people who fall in love and want to be together. However, they come up against the gossip, social pressure, and expectations of family and friends that hold them back from their natural instinct to marry and love one another. Both are "older" by the standards of the time but that does not stop them from wanting someone special. They are both excited about the prospect of spending their lives together and then, there is a pause as the elation runs up against reality. Borgnine and Blair are excellent in the role of a young couple who desire to break away from the bonds of friends and family to form their own home life. How will it turn out? This movie is a departure from the glossy Hollywood movies of the 1950's that used colour and celebrity talent and lacked the realism and honesty of this classic. Marty was a more mature movie, with a more effective treatment of social divisions and complicated relationships. Paddy Chayefsky wrote the script and Burt Lancaster was the producer. Both were creative forces in the film world of the 1950's. Delbert Mann directed; he also directed other fine movies such as Separate Tables and Middle of the Night. This is a precious film with a place in the history of American cinema.

In the opening scene you see a woman from a lower-class New York neighborhood chiding Marty Piletti continually: "Whatsa matter with you? Whatsa matter with you? Whatsa matter with you?" This is the theme of the movie – why isn't Marty married? Why isn't he loved? Why doesn't he fit in with the rest of society? Marty's social scene is his group of male friends who also can't get dates but are full of excuses about it, but he mainly hangs with his best friend Angie. Marty is filled with a lot of self-doubt, and is socially awkward. In one scene, Marty gets up the courage to call Mary Feeney after Angie convinces Marty that she likes him. He stumbles over his words: "I wonder if you might recall me?" Needless to say Mary does not recall him, nor does she want to go on a date with him.

You can almost physically feel Marty's pain as he strikes out in life. The lines are good, and Borgnine delivers them so that they hit your heart. "There comes a point in a man's life when he's gotta face some facts. And one fact that I gotta face is that whatever it is that women like, I haven't got!" In contrast, you see married couples having their own sets of problems, Marty's cousins Virginia and Tommy in particular, showing that the grass on the other side is not always greener. They have a new baby and Tommy's mother is interfering. To be fair, Tommy pushed his mom towards selling the house she had lived in for a lifetime and moving in with the new couple.

Marty finally sees light at the end of the tunnel when he meets Claire, a sweetly attractive girl who is dumped by her obnoxious blind date for not being "hot" enough. Two social rejects coming together and falling in love is seemingly a stale concept, but the script is fantastic. As they are dancing, Marty gives some insight into his character: "You don't get to be good-hearted by accident. You get kicked around long enough, you get to be a real professor of pain." Marty's mother, who was so anxious for Marty to get a girl, changes her mind when her sister moves from Tommy's couch to her couch, warning her that someday she'll be abandoned too. Angie doesn't like Marty's new girl because he is jealous of the way she monopolizes Marty's time. Marty is again filled with self-doubt and does not show up for his date with Clara, until he finally gets smart and realizes that he wants to rise above it all and pursue happiness.

There was one thread running through the movie that I thought was interesting. The characters say one thing and feel one way early on, then change their minds later. Marty's mother encourages him to get married, then later tries to break up his new relationship with his girlfriend. Marty's cousin Tommy encourages Marty to buy the butcher shop, then later tells him he is foolish. Tommy is in agreement with his wife that his mother should live elsewhere, then turns on Virginia when his mother starts to cry. There are other such "switches" that happen throughout.

Oh, keep an eye out and you might catch a glimpse of Jerry Ohrbach as a barely out his teens extra out on the dance floor.