Delbert Mann’s Marty is a romantic drama film starring Ernest Borgnine in arguably his best role and Betsy Blair. This film was Delbert Mann’s directorial debut. Marty was the first film to win both the Best Picture Oscar and the Cannes Film Festival’s Golden Palm.

Marty is the story about Marty Piletti, (screen legend Ernest Borgnine, The Poseidon Adventure, Escape from New York) a 34 Italian American butcher who lives in The Bronx with his mother. He’s a nice guy, and a good-natured person who faces a lot of pressure from his family and friends to settle down, get married and have kids. His mother always points out that all his brothers and sisters are already married, most of them with children. He is not against marriage, but he sees himself as an ugly, unattractive man and thinks it’s hopeless. One night at the Starbust Ballroom that Marty reluctantly goes to with his best friend, he connects with Clara Snyder (Betsy Blair, A Double Life) who gets dumped by her date as he found someone more attractive. Marty starts to converse with Clara, who cries in his arms after getting dumped. They leave the ballroom and talk for hours about life and relationships, and plan to meet again. Possibly, he might have found that one special person even though he friends and mother don’t like her. He feels the pressure to call her and at the same time his friends don’t want him to, because they think she’s a dog.

Marty is a sensational film with excellent acting and direction. In this movie, women are referred to as tomatoes if they are hot and dogs if they aren’t. I would say that in our contemporary society this would be highly unacceptable to refer to women as a vegetable or an animal! I know there are plenty of people like Marty who think relationships are past them and there’s no hope, they’re unattractive and feeling defeated, but suddenly someone comes a-calling!  

Kino re-releases Delbert Mann’s Marty with a brand new 4K master and the image quality is marvelous, looking even better than the first release. Black levels are nice and inky with great shadow detail. The greyscale looks perfectly balanced. The 4K scan gives the image a nice-polished look to it. It does indeed surpass the original release, even though it’s marginal. There are couple of minor blemishes to the video but, they were minor to me.  The visuals certainly look great for a 1955 film. Film grain is present throughout This Blu-ray includes Both the 1.85:1 and 1.37:1 versions of the film and both look simply fantastic.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 is also clear with a lot of depth to the dialogue and music. Everything sounded perfectly balanced with nothing coming in overly aggressive. Optional English subtitles are available for this release.

There aren’t many extras for the Marty Blu-ray, but it does offer a new commentary track by Entertainment Journalists and Authors Bryan Reesman and Max Evry who share plenty of details about the picture.

The other extra is some theatrical trailers from Kino Lorbers library which includes Marty, The Lost Weekend, The Apartment, Separate Tables, Fitzwilly, The Pink Jungle and In the Heat of the Night.

Fans of Marty should pick up this release due to the 4K scan, the commentary track and having both aspect ratios of the film included! Easily a recommended release for such a great film!

Marty

Director- Delbert Mann

Cast- Ernest Borgnine Betsy Blair

Country of Origin- US

Distributor – Kino Lorber

Number of Discs – 1

Reviewed by – David Steigman

Date –7/18/22