Marty

A thirty-four year old butcher in the Bronx lives with his mother and meets the same question every weekend: why are you not married. One night at a dance hall he meets a teacher who has just been abandoned there. The film does not make the meeting extraordinary; both of them feel plain and surplus, and the narrative says so outright. The real tension is not the woman but that the people around him do not approve of her, and what he will do about that. Delbert Mann directed, adapting a television play. Ernest Borgnine leads. It won both the Academy Award for best picture and the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Who it's for: those who like plain, everyday classical drama. Who it's not for: viewers waiting for incident; it is almost entirely conversation and runs under ninety minutes.