I found some time to watch the Steiger version (teleplay) of Marty while sitting with my terminally ill cat. I was a little distracted by the technical problems, the worst of which was the audio track, fading in and out and distorting the dialogue into illegibility; I was more able to negotiate the video quality, which occasionally overexposed.
The content differences: the teleplay does not contain the subplot in which Marty contemplates buying the butcher shop; Angie’s role is much smaller in the teleplay.
The jarring problems with the teleplay: Marty complains of being short, fat, and ugly. Steiger may not be a model, but he’s none of those, especially the fat part. Borgnine comes closer, although he’s just somewhat plump.
Secondly, Marty’s paramour (okay, that’s a jest) is oddly non-reactive. I’m not sure if the actress is simply trying to play a woman who has no idea of how to react when a man starts to fall for her, or if she just finds the entire character baffling. Granted, the movie’s version of the paramour was also somewhat of an enigma, but not to this magnitude.
And the shared baffling subplot: Aunt Catherine and Marty’s mother, Mrs. Piletti, discussing the woes of widowhood, and the dangers of sons marrying. In the teleplay, it’s like a wart on the side of an otherwise svelte cougar: what’s that doing there? In both productions it has an engaging quality of an authentic, and little-discussed, problem for women who no longer have children to raise, but in the teleplay it serves as little more than a reason for Mrs. Piletti to desperately disparage the focus of her son’s attention – and that, in turn, goes nowhere.
But the movie version permits us to see her regret at her impulsive action and how it may negatively impact her son’s future; her moment of selfishness could lead to a lifetime of aloneness for him. The same actress plays the role in both productions, and she does a fine job in the movie, her wordless acting beautifully conveying her realization of the potential consequences of her momentary indulgence of her future fears. However, exactly why this is necessary – unless it’s just part of the slice of life to which we are a witness – is somewhat unclear to me.
I know my reader prefers the teleplay, but I find it hard to see Borgnine’s Marty as more charismatic than Steiger’s; if anything, he’s less so, as I can see Borgnine himself as being so unsure of himself, while Steiger just doesn’t strike me as someone so underconfident as to think he’s an ugly toad. In the end, while buying the butcher shop might be extraneous, I much preferred the movie paramour to the teleplay’s version, and Ernest, ever so slightly, over Rod. While I appreciate both productions, I like the movie somewhat more.
