FILMS THAT STORM the Oscars are usually big, bombastic, about a sinking boat or laden with Serious Themes. Yet back in early 1956, the movie that dominated awards season was a far cry from all of that. It’s a film that’s rarely talked about today, but which won the Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director Academy Awards, plus the first Palme d’Or ever presented at the Cannes Film Festival. Nobody saw it coming. Because this was a quiet, gentle drama with nothing showy about it whatsoever — at 90 minutes, even the runtime is modest. This was a bolt out of the cinematic blue. This was Marty.
At the heart of this warm and understated classic is a genius bit of casting. Two years earlier, a 50-minute TV-play version of the film had been broadcast on NBC, starring Rod Steiger. But Steiger would not return for the big-screen version. Instead, the titular butcher from the Bronx, a timid and lonely man-child named Marty Piletti, would be played by Ernest Borgnine, an actor better known for being terrifying on screen than for being likeable or relatable. In From Here To Eternity he had played a sadistic soldier, pulling a switchblade on Montgomery Clift. In Bad Day At Black Rock, shot just before Marty, he had played a brute so disagreeable that Spencer Tracy tells him, “You’re not only wrong. You’re wrong at the top of your voice.”