The shortest Best Picture to date, Marty is, one of the most difficult Best Pictures so far to give a full analysis for. It’s easy to praise the film, but it’s also easy to nitpick about it. Looking at it from a purely judgemental view, does it make Marty a good film, or a bad film?

Marty Piletti, (Ernest Borgnine) is a man who lives a life without romance. Despite his friends constant nagging that he settle down and get married, he just isn’t fit for a woman in his life. But everything changes when he crosses paths with a schoolteacher named Clara, who seems willing to fall for him, too. But his mother suddenly decides she doesn’t want to lose her son to a wife.

And to be totally honest, I basically just told you everything that happens. The movie itself is really predictable, but once the two are actually dating and you want to know how they’ll survive the relationship, THE END! A lot of character arcs are incomplete, like this was just Act 1 of a two or three act story, and it left me with a feeling of ‘that’s it?’

But with that said, the dialogue is well written, feeling very much out of real life. And Borgnine.. wow! This is such a great performance, and he feels genuinely like a man who has been through rejection so many times. The remainder of the cast all play their parts well, and I love how well the ensemble acts off each other. Plus the editing and cinematography are put together surprisingly well.

I don’t know, I feel like I just walked out of seeing the first half of a great movie. I want to love it for the production value and the powerful performance at it’s center. Yet, I want to hate it because it stopped too soon and didn’t tell me what I wanted to know. I can say that this film did feel very genuine. Even if the story was predictable, it felt as if the people in the story were real people, and their drama was real drama. However, since it’s so short, it wouldn’t hurt you to watch. In fact, this one will be easy to re-watch some other day. I think at the end of the day, I enjoyed Marty, and I get the feeling I’ll be seeing this one in my future.

****