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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

1968, Drama, 2h 4m

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In this adaptation of the Carson McCullers novel, John Singer (Alan Arkin), who is deaf and mute, tries to help the people around him. He rents a bedroom in a small Southern town to be closer to his friend, Spiros (Chuck McCann), who is also deaf. John attempts to strike up a friendship with Mick (Sondra Locke), the teenage daughter of his disabled landlord (Biff McGuire), and meets the town drunk (Stacy Keach Jr.). Later, he helps Dr. Copeland confront his failing health.

Genre: Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Robert Ellis Miller

Producer: Thomas C. Ryan , Marc Merson

Writer: Thomas C. Ryan

Release Date (Theaters): Jul 31, 1968  original

Release Date (Streaming): Jan 1, 2009

Runtime: 2h 4m

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Production Co: Warner Brothers/Seven Arts

Cast & Crew

John Singer

Sondra Locke

Stacy Keach

Laurinda Barrett

Chuck McCann

Spiros Antonapoulos

Biff McGuire

Percy Rodrigues

Doctor Copeland

Cicely Tyson

Jackie Marlowe

Johnny Popwell

Wayne Smith

Peter Mamakos

Spirmonedes

John O'Leary

Hubert Harper

Anna Lee Carroll

Nurse Bradford

Ronald A. Riner

Deputy Sheriff Ivor

Robert Ellis Miller

Thomas C. Ryan

Marc Merson

Joel Freeman

Executive Producer

Screenwriter

Dave Grusin

Original Music

James Wong Howe

Cinematographer

John F. Burnett

Film Editing

Marion Dougherty

LeRoy Deane

Art Director

Albert Wolsky

Costume Design

Critic Reviews for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Audience reviews for the heart is a lonely hunter.

Gorgeous film and an outstanding performance by Chuck McCann. The performances remain with you long after viewing.

What an emotional roller coast ride ... I am always in awe of films that manage capture the beauty and tragedy of the nature of life in equal measures, making us want to live life to its fullest while being aware of the frail nature of all things that surround us, hold us together and make us get up in the morning and keep us awake at night. The performances are incredible and kudos goes out to the casting director for choosing the perfect actors and actresses without keeping one eye out on the Hollywood league and its ever-numbing lust for superficial beauty and style. A fantastic film ... a true masterpiece.

Decided to pick this movie up after seeing it on the library shelf & reading the back & Im so glad I did.A great movie from the start to the very sad end

This is a beautiful,heartbreaking film-give it a chance!

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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Translating to the screen the delicate if specious tragedy of Carson McCullers' first novel was clearly not an easy matter. Nor an entirely successful one, either. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter emerges as a fragmented episodic melodrama, with uneven dramatic impact and formula pacing.

By Variety Staff

Variety Staff

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Translating to the screen the delicate if specious tragedy of Carson McCullers’ first novel was clearly not an easy matter. Nor an entirely successful one, either. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter emerges as a fragmented episodic melodrama, with uneven dramatic impact and formula pacing.

Alan Arkin ‘s starring performance as a deaf-and-mute loner is erratic and mannered, but supporting cast generally is on target.

Story turns on Arkin and his influence on the lives of others. Pivotal character is little more than a prop, but, as rendered by Arkin, a destructive one.

Arkin’s performance is marred by twitching mannerism. Result is slapstick at times, bathos at others. Suffice it to say that when the focus of attention returns to the main character, the pic has a tendency to fall apart.

The motivations of other characters are defined in better fashion, although the credibility of most is doubtful. Actors have an uphill fight, and to their personal credit they rise above the material.

1968: Nominations: Best Actor (Alan Arkin), Supp. Actress (Sondra Locke)

• Production: Warner. Dir Robert Ellis Miller; Producer Thomas C. Ryan, Marc Merson; Screenplay Thomas C. Ryan; Camera James Wong Howe; Editor John F. Burnett; Music Dave Grusin Art Dir LeRoy Deane
• Crew: (Color) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1968. Running time: 122 MIN.
• With: Alan Arkin Sondra Locke Laurinda Barrett Stacy Keach Chuck McCann Cicely Tyson

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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

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Film Details

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Brief Synopsis

Cast & crew, robert ellis miller, chuck mccann, peter mamakos, john o'leary, sondra locke, photos & videos, technical specs.

John Singer is a deafmute who works as a silverware engraver in a small southern town. When his only companion, a retarded mute, Antonapoulos, is committed to a mental institution, Singer moves to another town in order to be near his friend. He finds work there and rents a room in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, who are having financial difficulties as a result of Mr. Kelly's recent hip injury. Because the Kellys' 14-year-old daughter, Mick, resents having to give up her room to him, Singer makes a few tentative efforts to win her friendship. He also tries to establish a rapport with Blount, a semi-alcoholic drifter, and Dr. Copeland, an embittered segregationist Negro who is secretly dying of cancer. Copeland's deepest disappointment is that his educated daughter, Portia, works as a domestic and is married to Willie Hamilton, a field hand. Following a successful attempt to win Mick's friendship by encouraging her love for classical music, Singer visits Antonapoulos, who is now suffering from a kidney infection. Although he takes his friend out for the day, Singer is more lonely than ever when he returns home. Meanwhile, Willie is jailed for defending himself against a group of white men, and subsequently he has a leg amputated after being placed in irons for trying to break jail. Feelings between Portia and her father become even more strained until Portia learns from Singer of Copeland's illness, and the two are reconciled. Mick willfully loses her virginity to Harry, the sensitive young brother of one of her classmates, when she realizes that her father's injury has permanently disabled him and she will have to leave school and go to work in order to help support the family. Profoundly disturbed by her sexual initiation, she again rejects Singer's friendship. A short time later, Singer goes to visit Antonapoulos and learns that he has been dead for several weeks. After visiting his friend's grave and saying goodby in sign language, Singer returns to his room and commits suicide. Some months thereafter, Mick brings flowers to Singer's grave and meets Dr. Copeland. As they talk, Mick explains that in a special way Singer's quiet strength has given her courage to face whatever her future may be.

Biff Mcguire

Laurinda barrett, jackie marlowe, robbie barnes, wayne smith, sherri vise, richard fingar, gavin paulin, percy rodrigues.

Cicely Tyson

Johnny popwell, horace oates jr., don swafford, hubert harper, anna lee carroll, ronald a. riner, robert j. anderson, george bennett, john f. burnett, leroy deane, marion dougherty associates, robert eaton, joel freeman, ralph gerling, al greenway, dave grusin, martin hornstein, james wong howe, marie kenney, larry kostroff, joe la bella, marc merson, wolfgang amadeus mozart, harold noyes, thomas c. ryan, weston scarsbrook, maggie, sec smith, francis e. stahl, albert wolsky, photo collections.

Award Nominations

Best supporting actress, the heart is a lonely hunter.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER - Alan Arkin Stars in the 1968 Film Adaptation of Carson McCuller's Novel

The heart is a lonely hunter - the heart is a lonely hunter - alan arkin stars in the 1968 film adaptation of carson mcculler's novel.

Filmed in Selma, Marion, Demopolis, and Birmingham, Alabama.

Miscellaneous Notes

Voted Best Actor (Arkin) by the 1968 New York Film Critics Association.

Released in United States Summer July 1968

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Produced by, the heart is a lonely hunter (1968), directed by robert ellis miller.

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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Reviews

• 2 hr 4 mins
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A deaf man moves to a small town where he strikes up a friendship with the teenage daughter of his injured landlord, and makes a series of new acquaintances including a doctor and the town drunk.

The touching McCullers novel is here capsulized in a less than rewarding film wherein Arkin plays a deaf mute who earns his living as a silversmith engraver. When his closest friend, McCann, another mute who is also retarded, is placed in a distant institution, Arkin moves to a small town to be near him. He rents a room in the home of McGuire and Barrett, who need money since McGuire is unemployed and is recuperating with a broken hip. Locke, the family's teenage daughter, resents being moved from her room to make a space for Arkin. He later wins her over by interesting her in classical music. Getting a job in the area, Arkin also befriends Keach, an alcoholic who later develops a kidney infection, and Rodriguez, a segregationist black physician whose only ambition in life is to have his daughter, Tyson, better her life; she is a domestic servant and is married to an illiterate field hand, Popwell. Rodriguez is dying of cancer, a secret he asks Arkin to keep from Tyson. Popwell is later jailed after a run-in with white bigots and loses a leg after being chained up following a jailbreak attempt. Locke, meanwhile, has a sexual affair with Smith and loses her virginity, which confuses and angers her. When she learns that her father, McGuire, will be a permanent cripple and that she must work to support the family, she turns against Arkin, making his life miserable. Then Arkin goes to visit his pal, McCann, only to learn he has been dead for a number of weeks. The world has turned black as well as silent for Arkin; he returns to his lonely room and kills himself. Feeling guilty, Locke visits Arkin's grave and meets Rodriguez. They talk about Arkin and their problems, and Locke admits that Arkin in his quiet way has helped her through her crisis. The film does not work well despite Arkin's fine effort. Unlike the novel, which details human nuances and the subtleties of racism and hatred for the deformed, the film attempts to encompass too much, presenting disjointed character development. The direction by Miller is choppy and flat, and the entire production is a poor paste-up of the story. Other than Arkin, the cast, including Keach in a stereotyped, predictable role, is unconvincing. Locke is in over her head and plays the spoiled brat with no energy at all, just a carping posture and a vocal delivery guaranteed to annoy. Arkin was nominated as Best Actor, but lost to Cliff Robertson. Locke also received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

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Carson McCullers at 100

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By John Williams

• March 3, 2017

Feb. 19 was the centenary of the birth of Carson McCullers, one of the most distinctive and ill-fated writers in American history. McCullers died when she was 50, in 1967. She suffered a series of strokes before she was 30, and spent much of her life in pain.

Earlier this year, the Library of America published a volume of McCullers’s short stories, plays, essays, memoirs and poems. But it’s the author’s fiction (also published by the Library of America, among others) that keeps her reputation strong a century on. Her debut, “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” is routinely listed among the best books of the 20th century, and Rose Feld’s assessment of it in the Book Review in 1940 proves that its towering reputation was formed more or less immediately.

“No matter what the age of its author, ‘The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter’ would be a remarkable book,” Feld started. “When one reads that Carson McCullers is a girl of 22 it becomes more than that. Maturity does not cover the quality of her work. It is something beyond that, something more akin to the vocation of pain to which a great poet is born.”

McCullers was actually 23 at the time, but point taken.

“She writes with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming,” Feld said, concluding that we were to anticipate McCullers’s second novel “with something like fear,” given the standard set by the first.

Despite her ailments, McCullers managed to lead an eventful life. Reviewing Virginia Spencer Carr’s biography “The Lonely Hunter,” in 1975, Robert Phillips said the book plumbed McCullers’s “inordinate dependency upon others” and unraveled “relationships far kinkier than those exposed in Quentin Bell’s ‘Virginia Woolf’ or Nigel Nicolson’s ‘Portrait of a Marriage.’ ” One friend of McCullers was quoted by Carr: “You had to like burdens to love Carson, and many of us could not afford her emotionally or economically.”

“I got an advance in the mid-four figures for ‘300 Arguments’ — a book I worked on for a couple years. So, clearly, this is not a job. Writing these books is not a job. And I guess I’m lucky in that I never assumed it would be, so I made other plans.” — Sarah Manguso, in an interview with Hazlitt

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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

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THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER

by Carson McCullers ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 4, 1940

A strange and powerful book, standing quite apart from anything I can recall. The scene is a small Southern mill town; the central figure is a mute, a quiet, tolerant man to whom four people turn to express their individual hopes and beliefs. His very silence endows him in their eyes with a godlike quality; his human fallibilities are shut within his silence. There is a Negro doctor, struggling for the elevation of his race; there is an agitator, trying to show the world the injustices of the capitalistic system; there is an appealing girl of twelve, whose gift for music is frustrated by poverty and ignorance. The close of the book is confessed defeat for all. Direct, uncompromising, a distinguished piece of writing whose very subject matter will make it almost impossible to sell.

Pub Date: June 4, 1940

ISBN: 0618526412

Page Count: 372

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1940

LITERARY FICTION

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BOOK REVIEW

by Carson McCullers & edited by Carlos L. Dews

HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

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NORMAL PEOPLE

by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2019

Absolutely enthralling. Read it.

A young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up—sorry, can't tell you how it ends!

Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends , in 2017. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice; Marianne is strange and friendless. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Or both. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become.

Pub Date: April 16, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-984-82217-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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by Sally Rooney

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Heart of the Hunter’ on Netflix, a Rock-Solid South African Actioner About a Retired Killer Dragged Back Into the Biz

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Innovative action movies are harder to find than the Ark of the Covenant, and that’s why the genre is more about honing the craft. Case in point, Heart of the Hunter (now on Netflix), a South African programmer that shows little interest in deviating from the retired-killer-is-heavily-compelled-to-get-back-in-the-game subgenre tropes – which so often have so much to do with special OPS or black OPS, always with the OPS the OPS the OPS – so it’d better give us some scintillating fights, chases and gunplay, right? And that’s a matter of style and execution, which director Mandla Dube shows often enough to maybe keep us watching. 

HEART OF THE HUNTER : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Zuko Khumalo (Bonko Khoza) thinks he’s out. But will they pull him back in? Probably! Especially now that he’s past his life as a black-ops assassin who slays people with a massive spear, and settled down for a nice boring domestic life with Malime (Masasa Mbangeni) and her boy Pakamile (Boleng Mogotsi). He repairs motorcycles for a living. He bought an engagement ring. He gets on smashingly with the kid. Nothing will force him back to his old life. Nothing! You might as well stop watching the movie right now, because it will be about little more than getting up and eating breakfast and playing with the boy and turning a wrench. HAPPINESS REIGNS.

But. Things are happening in the shadows. Sleazy corrupt scumbucket presidential candidate Mtima (Sisanda Henna) has a thing for taking care of dissenters. He’s targeted Johnny Klein (Peter Butler), an old ally of Zuko’s, as a terrorist. And he has the head of the Presidential Intelligence Agency, Molebogeng (Connie Ferguson), in his pocket. Johnny Klein knocks on Zuko’s door one morning and gets the pulling-back-in process moving, but it’s not easy – Zuko’s haunted by the time he unwittingly speared the living life out of a guy in front of the guy’s kid. We all know guys like Zuko, because we’ve all seen a lot of action movies about killers who’ve gotten out of the killing business and end up back in the killing business, because the killing business isn’t so easy to get out of but is very easy to get back into, especially if you have things you love in your life that become easy targets for villains. You know, like a dog, or a fiance with an adorable little boy.

Anyway, back to this Johnny Klein fella. Mtima is a full-blown threat to democracy, and there are other political considerations to consider if you’re up to considering them, but why would you be? You’re waiting for Zuko to get back to doing what he does best, and that ain’t being a family man (although we should give him credit for being pretty good at that). So of course, Zuko resists, but there comes a time when he has no choice but to not resist anymore. Meanwhile, there are a few other plot dev- er, characters padding out this story, including PIA agent Naledi (Nicole Fortuin), who does the right thing instead of the wrong thing like Molebogeng, and grizzled journalist Bressler (Deon Coetzee), who’s trying to take down Mtima with the fourth estate instead of whatever estate it is where one uses a terrifyingly huge spear to take people down – like Zuko does.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Does every new action movie beg comparison to John Wick ? Yep, pretty much.

Performance Worth Watching: Multi-dimensional characters in this film are, well, what’s the opposite of a dime a dozen? But Khoza is reasonably convincing in the role of a man pulled in two directions by his internal conflict – and good enough to keep us involved. 

Memorable Dialogue: Bressler gets all the good lines: “Please don’t call me ‘sir.’ I’m a scoundrel and a drunk.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Don’t judge Heart of the Hunter for being predictable. Judge it for its rock-solid technical prowess – thoughtful execution of hand-to-hand combat sequences, the occasional stylistic indulgence, slick editing and a pretty good eye for filling the frame. The film has the feel of a lowish-budget digitally-shot direct-to-VOD actioner of the type that inexplicably turns up on the Netflix top 10 once in a while (some of you out there really enjoy the Sniper franchise!), but with a more invigorating visual sense, which tells us that Dube isn’t necessarily collecting a paycheck, but may have something to prove as a director. 

And that modest, but notable invigoration keeps Heart of the Hunter afloat. There are moments when the film feels convoluted for its own sake (there’s a point where I wanted to yell PLEASE STOP INTRODUCING NEW CHARACTERS TO THE PLOT), when the melodrama feels a little overjuiced, when we yeah-right our way through a scene in which a truck stuffed with highly explosive gas tanks conveniently rolls into the frame so it can blow up real good and Zuko’s motorcycle can look cool as eff zooming through the flames. But Dube is wise enough to realize that practical effects render films like this far more credible, so he leans away from CGI, crashing real cars and emphasizing the tangible whoomp-and-crack of punches landing brutal body blows. It’s a pretty simple formula that CG-addled films seem to overlook: When violence feels realistic, the stakes are raised, and the movie is all the better for it. 

Our Call: Heart of the Hunter isn’t going to eclipse the Wick s and Bourne s of the world, but for a modestly engaging  

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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TGI - Episode 315 "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"

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• October 26, 2023 (United Kingdom)
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