The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Carnival is supposedly taking place on a warm summer night judging from characters' lightweight costumes but actors' frosty breath can be seen in a number of shots.

When Dr.

Copeland goes in to see Judge Bronson he enters via a swinging door with a glass panel in it.

A member of the camera crew is reflected in the glass as it swings shut.

I saw this film as a teenager during its first run. It moved me then and it still moves me today.

I had the benefit of attending a coed Catholic High School with the freedom to challenge your soul. And so we were compelled to watch this emotionally compelling movie with Alan Arkin providing us the prism thru which the heart seeks love, finds it in unusual places and suffers the kind of pains that evade the limits of language.

Not super successful adaptation of the Carson McCullers novel published in 1940.Some films from the 1960s were so well done that they still feel fresh and contemporary all these years later.

Alan Arkin makes this almost a on man show with his portrayal of a deaf mute protagonist in The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. Carson McCullers novel is brought to a vivid life in this film.

Actually, Why qualify it as "nearly perfect", it was perfect in every sense of the word, from the casting, to the excellent, heartfelt performances, the setting, and the story line, that dealt with issues that are still relevant today. It is hard to choose a single performance as Alan Arkin's best, but this is my personal favorite, in which he expressed every emotion, without uttering a single word.

It is very hard to tell a story about loneliness, since stories always have people interacting in them, but Carson McCullers did it wonderfully in "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," and this Hollywood adaptation is a very successful as well. Deaf-mute John Singer is the main character, and he navigates the world of a Southern city, working as a jeweler and renting a room with a family that has troubles of its own.

Outstanding 1968 film, a year of historical turbulence and drastic changes in the social mainstream are captured by this captivating film which shows how difficult life can be and that at many times there are no solutions to the problem one must experience.Alan Arkin is awesome as the deaf mute whose kindness is appreciated by those he befriends, but at the same time, they don't realize what he is going through.

Robert Ellis Miller is hardly a name to inspire enthusiasm so his 1968 version of Carson McCuller's novel "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" might come as something of a surprise. Yes, it's maudlin more often than not but it does feature a magnificent performance by Alan Arkin as Singer, the deaf mute who forms a friendship with his landlady's young daughter, (a superb Sondra Locke in her first film).

Let's talk first about the last, a non-Hollywood ending, but effective as was the entire beautiful, sentimental movie.The several stories in this excellent adaptation of the McCuller novel tie well together making the film as a whole one of the finest sentimental journeys ever put on screen.