The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Long a staple of late-night local broadcasts and all-movie cable networks, this affecting 1968 adaptation of Carson McCullers' titular novel is habitually taken for granted even by diehard film buffs, who forget that it earned top-billed Alan Arkin a well-deserved Oscar nomination and the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Actor. Arkin plays the gentle John Singer, a deaf man who moves to a small Southern town to be near his institutionalized mentally-challenged friend Antonapoulos (Chuck McCann). With an uncanny knack for attracting lost, wounded souls, John tries to help a resentful teenage girl (Sondra Locke in her Oscar-nominated film debut), a young alcoholic (Stacy Keach, also making his first screen appearance), a dying African-American doctor (Percy Rodriguez), and the doctor's impoverished daughter (Cicely Tyson). Easily the best thing directed by Robert Ellis Miller, who worked primarily in television, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter boasts finely calibrated performances from the entire cast, including erstwhile kiddie-show host McCann, better known at that time for his bombastic clowning. Presented with a beautiful DVD transfer (though no extras, unfortunately, other than the theatrical trailer), this wonderful film is ripe for reevaluation. Highly recommended. (E. Hulse)