1955 romantic drama, dir. Delbert Mann, Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair;
IMDb /
allmovie. "College girls are
one step from the street, I tell you. My son Joseph wife, she type on
the typewriter - one step from the street!"
By many accounts this was a film designed to fail, or rather to
be left uncompleted as a tax dodge by Hecht-Lancaster. But as often
happens, the people who were getting their big breaks put their hearts
into it, and instead it became a minor success. (Borgnine didn't get
cast as a leading man again, though.)
Paddy Chayefsky adapts his own 1953 teleplay here, and for all I'm
unimpressed with his pseudo-intellectualism in Network he does a
solid job. (In his day, or at least in his mind, television was seen
as the poor relation of the film world, so he tried to produce
film-like experiences even if they were constantly being interrupted
by ads for soap powder.) Here he indulges in that difference: if the
films are all about glamour, he'll write a story about ordinary
people, about unglamorous people (well, Hollywood-ugly, anyway), who
see all their friends getting married and somehow it just never seems
to happen to them.
So Marty, a butcher's assistant on the verge of opening his own shop,
meets Clara, dumped by her date (who only brought her as a favour)
when he sees someone prettier, and while they're both spiky they seem
to get on. They're both nervous, and they talk about their dreams in a
way they can't with their families. Some obstructions happen,
especially Marty's Aunt Caterina (quoted above) who's justifiably wary
of being sidelined in her own home (especially as Marty and the rest
of his family have been planning her future without once thinking of
asking her), but ultimately, especially when confronted with the
prospect of a lifetime saying "I dunno, what do you wanna do" to his
loser buddies and the alternative to that life he's briefly glimpsed,
Marty calls up Clara the next day.
(And all right, this 90-minute film was expanded from a programme that
ran in 51 minutes plus advertisements, and sometimes the seams show.)
It's all quite heavy on the Italian stereotyping (in that generic way
that could as easily be Jewish, British Indian, Greek, etc.), but it's
well observed. Marty's running out of things to talk about, but too
nervous to stop? He talks about his time in the Army. And if it
unquestioningly accepts that an unmarried life is a life of Failure,
well, it's a romance, and it's in the 1950s, and it's written for TV.
Not much room to challenge assumptions in any of those spaces.
Good fun, though, and worth a watch.
I talk more about this film on
Ribbon of Memes.