Delbert Mann’s Marty tells the simple story of two lonely, desperate people (played by Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair) meeting one another and waking to the possibility that life can offer more than what society has allotted for them. Marty remains one of only two films to have won both the Palme d’Or and the Academy Award for Best Picture, and it bridges both Hollywood romantic comedy and European art cinema. The venerable Paddy Chayefsky penned its fleet screenplay, which often stands in peculiar relationship to Delbert Mann’s frequently severe direction, which, with the utilization of high-contrast lighting and occasionally stark composition, underlines the characters’ isolation and existential longing. That isolation can only be dispelled by awareness that, as Borgnine’s Marty so memorably declares, “we ain’t such dogs as we think we are.”
—Ryan Holt
- Directed by: Delbert Mann
- Produced by: Paddy Chayefsky Harold Hecht Harold Hecht
- Written by: Paddy Chayefsky
- Music by: Roy Webb
- Cinematography by: Joseph LaShelle
- Editing by:
- Release Date: 1955
- Running Time: 90
- Language: English
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2017 Top 25 Films on Waking Up — #13