THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER could be found silently beating among 1968’s crowd of mostly lame comedies and bloody action exercises, bringing a welcome serving of genuine human drama to temper the commotion, albeit with a measure of life-as-unfair-tragedy being part of the admission price.

Unnamed town, somewhere down South (dispense happy wishes from the get-go). Silver engraver ‘John Singer’ (Alan Arkin) is best friends with mentally ill man-child ‘Spiros Antonapoulos’ (Chuck McCann, 33) whose continual troubles with the law (petty theft variety) result in commitment to a psychiatric hospital in another town. Assuming task of guardian, John moves in order to be near his disturbed pal. Bonding their friendship and compounding their respective courses is that they’re both deaf mutes. John boards with the financially troubled Kelly family. The mother (Lucinda Barrett) has her careworn hands full: her husband (Biff McGuire) is physically disabled, little boy ‘Bubber’ (Jackie Marlowe) is keyed to mischief and teenage daughter ‘Margaret’ (Sondra Locke), nicknamed ‘Mick’, is poised to emerge from ignored tomboy to blossoming maiden. John’s kindly and perceptive nature also touches the lives of self-pitying, hard-drinking drifter ‘Jake Blount’ (Stacy Keach) and ‘colored side of town’ physician ‘Benedict Copeland’ (Percy Rodrigues), bitter over his second-class status as an African-American (education not helping much) and emotionally isolated from his daughter ‘Portia’ (Cicely Tyson) who resents him for his condescending attitude toward her husband. Fate took John’s hearing but the loss facilitated his ability to connect as an outsider, a disguised gift that ultimately links them all. But as with intersecting roads, crisscrossing human paths lead in different directions, often to unforeseen destinations.

In far & away his best film, director Robert Ellis Miller does a fine job with his first-rate cast. The script by Thomas C. Ryan (Hurry Sundown, The Pad…and How To Use It) was adapted from Carson McCuller’s bestseller debut, written when she was 23. The 356 page novel, published in 1940, was set in the 30’s; the movie adaptation moves it up to the contemporary 60’s and though Georgia was the book’s setting, the film leaves it regional; it could just as well be small-town USA writ large. The compassion is as universal as the pain.

Chuck McCann’s performance strikes many as over-the-top (like Jackie Gleason’s mugging in Gigot); we’re on the split-decision fence with it. Everyone else is very good to superlative. Little Jackie Marlowe is hilariously real, Tyson (43 looking 23) burning with hurt fervor. In his feature debut, stage-trained Keach, 26, shows the promise that in years to come he’d deliver up in pictures and parts as diverse and inhabiting as Fat City, Up In Smoke and The Long Riders.

Arkin, 33, had zoomed to notice in 1966-67, first as a deadpan Soviet sailor in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, then a chilly sadist in Wait Until Dark. Here he exudes gentleness, patience and civility personified, a beautifully controlled immersion that never resorts to any ‘cute’ grabs for easy sympathy, instead offering a rich palette of minute character reveals. You forget it’s Alan Arkin: you’re watching John Singer, ‘listening’ to him with your eyes.

Left-field newcomer Locke won the coveted part over more than 600 competitors. So keen to do so, she fibbed six years off her actual 23, and her fiancee at the time helped her prep for Mick’s gamine look by bleaching her eyebrows, calibrating makeup and hair and binding back her bosom. Subterfuge aside, she was remarkably honest in the performance itself, not a false moment to find as myriad conflicting emotions and desires, hurts and revelations flow thru her and into the viewer.

Arkin was Oscar-nominated for Best Actor, Locke for Supporting Actress. Sympathy wins (Cliff Robertson, Ruth Gordon) won out. At the box office placement was 92nd, the gross $3,100,000. 1968’s other movie about a disabled character, Charly, ranked 15th in receipts office and copped Robertson the Oscar. Today it comes off synthetic, the trophy undeserved. We’ll take ‘Heart‘. *

Shot in Selma, Alabama. With Johnny Popwell, Wayne Smith, Sherri Vise (her sole acting job, perfect as Mick’s vacuous, princess’y neighbor ‘Delores’) and Peter Mamakos. 125 minutes.

* The Praise Is A Dodgy Quarry—director Ellis had another movie out that year, the comedy-drama Sweet November but since that one stars Sandy Dennis and Anthony Newley some other, braver reviewer will have to let you in on it: gargling razor blades would be more fun that squirming thru two hours of their twitches.  Arkin, so eloquently grand here, stepped in ’68 sidewalk merde with the woeful Inspector Clouseau, defeated by script, direction and the collective loyalty to Peter Sellers (almost as if a new guy played James Bond…) He took it and forged ahead. Locke’s sensational launch petered away into lame role choices and denying or losing a host of good ones. Eventually Clint Eastwood locked his Svengali sites on her and they made six movies together, of varying quality. Their private life entanglement we leave for others to dice and mince. She passed away in 2018, and to the last, despite full discovery of the ruse, she never copped to brushing off those six years for her yearning teenager of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. Can’t escape your past, deny it.