The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (film)
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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is a 1968 American film adaptation of the 1940 novel of the same name by Carson McCullers. It was directed by Robert Ellis Miller.
Plot
John Singer is a deaf-mute who works as a silver engraver in a southern US town. His only friend is a mentally disabled mute, Spiros Antonapoulos, who continually gets into trouble with the law, since he does not know any better. When Spiros is committed to a mental institution by his cousin, who is his guardian, John offers to become Spiros' guardian, but he is told that Spiros will have to go to the institution until this has been arranged. John decides to move to a town near the institution 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' teenage daughter, Margaret ('Mick'), resents having to give up her room to him, John tries to win her friendship. He also tries to become friends with Jake Blount, a semi-alcoholic drifter, and Dr. Copeland, an embittered African American physician who is secretly dying of lung cancer. John helps interpret for a deaf-mute patient who is seeing Dr. Copeland. Copeland's deepest disappointment is that his educated daughter, Portia, works as a domestic and is married to a field hand. Meanwhile, Mick has an outdoor teenage party at her house, but is disgusted after some boy guests disrupt it by fighting and setting off fireworks.
Following a successful attempt to win Mick's friendship by encouraging her love for classical music, John visits Spiros and, although he takes him out for the day, John is lonelier than ever when he returns home. Meanwhile, Portia and her husband are attacked and he is jailed for defending himself at an incident at a carnival. Portia gets upset at Dr. Copeland for not perjuring himself to help bring out the truth about what happened in the fight. Dr. Copeland and Portia's relationship gets even more strained after her husband has his leg amputated after being placed in irons for trying to escape jail.
John gets them to reconcile after Portia learns from John of Dr. Copeland's illness. Mick willfully loses her virginity to the sensitive older brother of one of her classmates after she realizes that her father's injury has permanently disabled him and she will have to leave school and work to help support the family. Disturbed by her sexual initiation, she ignores John's request for some company. John goes to visit Spiros and learns that he has been dead for several weeks. After visiting his friend's grave, pacing and apologizing over and over in sign language, John returns to his room and commits suicide.
Some months afterwards, Mick brings flowers to John's grave and meets Dr. Copeland. As they talk, Mick asks the question, "Why did he do it?" Dr. Copeland leaves, and the film ends with Mick admitting out loud to John's open grave that she loved him.
Cast
- Alan Arkin as John Singer
- Sondra Locke as Margaret 'Mick' Kelly
- Laurinda Barrett as Mrs. Kelly
- Stacy Keach (as Stacy Keach, Jr.) as Jake Blount
- Chuck McCann as Spiros Antonapoulos
- Biff McGuire as Mr. Kelly
- Percy Rodriguez as Dr. Benedict Mady Copeland
- Cicely Tyson as Portia Copeland
- Jackie Marlowe as Bubber Kelly
- Johnny Popwell as Willie
- Wayne Smith as Harry Minowitz
- Gonzalo Meroño as Richard Steward
- Peter Mamakos as Spirmonedes
- John O'Leary as Beaudine
- Hubert Harper as Biff Brannon
- Sherri Vise as Delores
- Anna Lee Carroll as Nurse Bradford
See also
