Summary: 7/10: a well-crafted slice of 1950s life that earns its Best Picture Oscar even if much of it feels like anthropology now.
Funny, amusing, and quite dated, but an enjoyable watch anyway. Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning screenplay, expanded from his own television play, captures a specific moment in working-class Bronx life with sharp ear for dialogue and genuine affection for its characters, even when those characters are casually cruel to each other in ways that feel distinctly of their era.
Ernest Borgnine is wonderful as Marty, the lonely butcher who's been told he's too ugly, too boring, too old to find love. Borgnine brings vulnerability and dignity to a man who's internalized everyone else's low opinion of him, and when he meets Clara at a dance, you believe completely in his cautious hope. Betsy Blair matches him perfectly as Clara, a schoolteacher equally convinced of her own undesirability. Their tentative connection feels real, hard-won, precious.
The supporting cast is uniformly good, from Marty's suffocating mother to his buddies who offer terrible advice while standing on street corners with nothing better to do. Director Delbert Mann keeps the pacing tight and the focus intimate, preserving the television play's chamber piece quality even as it opens up to film.
What dates the film isn't just the casual sexism and ethnic stereotypes, but the very specific social world it depicts: one where unmarried thirty-somethings are considered tragic figures, where mothers wield guilt like surgical instruments, where men gather nightly to complain about their boring lives without ever considering they might change them.
Still, at its core, this is a sweet story about two lonely people finding each other, and Borgnine and Blair make you root for them.
