Metacritic reviews

Marty is a must-see picture. [11 Jan 1956, p.6]

It’s a cliché to remark that “they don’t make them like they used to” but, in the case of Marty, it’s true.

Marty is one of those films that appear every few years or so -- a picture so sensitively acted, so tenderly written, so human in its appeal, that it has the utmost distinction, no matter what kind of audience is in the theatre. [04 Aug 1955, p.21]

Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote the script, has captured the human element deftly. Here are human beings as they really are, refreshingly life-like, piteously real, and often hilariously funny. [16 May 1955, p.15]

This 1955 example of kitchen-sink realism about the awakening love life of a Bronx butcher (Ernest Borgnine) and his shy girlfriend (Betsy Blair), directed by Delbert Mann, has never been popular with auteurists, but Paddy Chayevsky’s script, adapted from his own TV play, shows his flair for dialogue at its best, and the film manages to be touching, if minor.

Enormously influential, it spawned Hollywood's interest in smaller scale, prosaic dramas, few of which failed to match its resonance.

It’s a warm, human, sometimes sentimental and an enjoyable experience.

Marty makes a warm and winning film, full of the sort of candid comment on plain, drab people that seldom reaches the screen.

Overrated at the time, largely because its teleplay origins (by Paddy Chayefsky) brought a veneer of naturalism and close-up intimacy to the Hollywood of the day. But it does have doggy charm and a certain perceptiveness (the butcher's continuing doubts as to what his mates will think; his mother's jealousy despite constant nagging about marriage).

You have to have considerable tolerance to make it through Chayefsky's repetitive dialogue, his insistence on the humanity of "little" people, and his attempt to create poetry out of humble, drab conversations.