My Top 25 Favorite Films: #22!

In the neighborhood of my childhood, I was always captivated by the guy who owned the delicatessen a block away. His name was Charlie and he always looked so sad. I know he had a wife and daughter who lived upstairs from the store, but he never appeared to enjoy slicing ham. I'd go in there usually once a day. I would be armed with a grocery list from one of my parents, requesting I bring home the staples of a daily existence. A quarter pound of salami, a quart of milk, a six pack of Schaefer, and a pack of Kents. At such an early age, I was already an enabler.

Charlie was always nice to me, but I never knew anything about him, except that he was a big fan of Red Skelton. He couldn't get enough of Freddie the Freeloader. I was crazy enough to think that I'd have a future summer job delivering groceries for Charlie. When I got older, I remember asking him. He just smiled faintly. "No thank you." And he went back to his quiet, almost dour existence.

I think of Charlie every time I see the movie "Marty." This phenomenal 1955 winner of the Best Picture Oscar offers a portrayal of somebody almost as sad as Charlie. Marty is the local butcher in a Bronx neighborhood somewhere near Fordham Road. He is a nice and personable overweight man, who is perpetually and probably eternally single. As played by Ernest Borgnine (who could give you stys if you look too long at him), Marty is not the greatest looker in the world. And, except for a couple of losers from the local gin mill on Webster Avenue, everybody around him is married. He lives with his Italian mother, who constantly wonders why he hasn't found that nice girl. Marty starts to become philosophical about it all. He tells her:

"Ma, sooner or later, there comes a point in a man's life when he's gotta face some facts. And one fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that women like, I ain't got it. I chased after enough girls in my life, I went to enough dances. I got hurt enough, I don't wanna get hurt no more. I just called up a girl this afternoon, and I got a real brush-off, boy! I figured I was past the point of being hurt, but that hurt. Some stupid woman who I didn't even want to call up. She gave me the brush. No, Ma, I don't wanna go to Stardust Ballroom because all that ever happened to me there was girls made me feel like I was a-a-a bug. I got feelings, you know. I-I had enough pain. No thanks, Ma!"

So, Marty adopts the sadness as a part of his life. Just as I watched Charlie the deli owner do when I was a kid.

This is a real movie and it feels even more genuine every time I see it. Let's face it, most men can identify to walking up to someone and asking them out or for a dance---and be summarily dismissed. And most all people can connect with the sensation of human rejection. Despite the fact that it is set in the Bronx of the 1950s, there is a universality that transcends the years. And it sparks anew feelings of a simpler time. Indeed, "Marty" was filmed entirely on the streets of the Bronx depicted in the movie, which makes it exude even more genuineness.

My roommate once mentioned this movie as being thoroughly depressing. Maybe, but always real. And, like life, there is the roller coaster for Marty, because hope is always right around the corner.

When I see "Marty" now, I wonder if Charlie, at one point, asked his wife out for a date at the RKO Fordham. And was there at least a smile on his face that very night?

Dinner last night: Sausage pizza at CPK.