It's the stark, simple portrait of a gentle, lonely man, played by Ernest Borgnine, who lives with his Catholic Italian mother, works as a butcher and longs for a loving relationship as he heads toward middle age.
"I'm 36 years old and I've been lookin' for a girl every Saturday night of my life," he tells his best friend. "I'm a fat little ugly guy and girls don't go for me, that's all."
It's just that sort of unfettered sentiment that gives the drama such powerful resonance. The story centers mostly on a single Saturday night in Marty's life. After despairing about how to spend it, and then suffering another humiliating rejection when he calls a girl to ask her out, Marty finally decides to attend a lonelyhearts social at the Waverly Ballroom. There he meets a girl (Betsy Blair) who has just been ditched by her blind date—a slick fellow who offers Marty "five bucks if you take this "dog",(i.e. girl) home for me."
Marty approaches her, and in their mutual misery they find a bond...
It is a sweet film but it shows the weakness of American Catholicism, in that, Catholicism is like a nationality--"You're Catholic...because your Italian, Irish or Mexican..." not for your salvation. I think the evangelization through culture is putting the cart before the horse. First we must seek our salvation and culture is expressed from this effort to conform to God's will.
