Review of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

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). Of course, the territory is typical McCullers with all the characters carrying baggage of one kind or another and with Arkin coming across as a kind of Earth Angel rather than an ordinary human being and in typical McCullers' fashion he ends up helping everyone but himself. The ending's a downer, (what's the life lesson McCullers is teaching us here, you wonder), but it's still better than it could have been and it's probably Miller's best film.