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Friday, August 12, 2022

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER (1968)

Adapted from the Carson McCullers novel, one of those Hollywood literary prestige items designed as a credit to the industry only to age rapidly.  But not this time.  Two missteps hold it back a bit (an add-on Racial Injustice storyline, and updating the book’s Depression Era setting), but almost everything else is better than you expect or remember.  Especially in the warmly atmospheric Deep South color (Selma, AL; real interiors) caught near the end of his career by James Wong Howe.  (Utterly different then his next great effort, cool & sooty for THE MOLLY MAGUIRES/’70.*)  And from Alan Arkin as the deaf/mute engraver who goes to a new town to stay close to his friend (mentally unstable, insistently troublesome Chuck McCann, currently institutionalized), slowly becoming involved in the lives of the scrappy family where he rents a room, Stacy Keach’s vagabond tramp (debuting with his own fast-receding hairline), a doctor’s family in the town’s Black neighborhood (an early credit for a powerful Cicely Tyson as the resentful daughter).  To all these people, there’s something saintly about Arkin’s concern & altruism.  A sentimental view ruthlessly avoided by Arkin thru tact and restraint.  All precision, nothing soggy, less innate goodness than a desperate attempt to appease his unbearable singularity inside a community he can’t fully take part in.  (Easy to imagine how overplayed this part could have been.)  Debuting as the teenage daughter he grows particularly close to, a 24-yr-old Sondra Locke is almost as old for this 17 yr-old as 26-yr-old Julie Harris was for her 12-yr-old in McCullers' MEMBER OF THE WEDDING/’52.  Locke nearly as memorable.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, MEMBER OF THE WEDDING. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/03/member-of-wedding-1952.html

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *Nice insights on filming HUNTER and Howe’s generous help to newbie director Robert Ellis Miller (much as Howe had been on Joshua Logan’s PICNIC/’55) in JAMES WONG HOWE/CINEMATOGRAPHER by Todd Rainsberger.

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