The Southern Movies series explores images of the South in modern films as well as how those images affect American perspectives on the region.

The 1968 adaptation The Heart is a Lonely Hunter takes us to Depression-era Georgia to follow the lives of six outsiders in a small Southern town. Based on Carson McCullers’s 1940 novel of the same name, the story centers primarily on a teenage tomboy named Mick Kelly and on a deaf-mute named John Singer, who has come to live with Mick’s family as a boarder. Other characters who round out the cast are working-class radical Jake Blount and Doctor Copeland, who is African American, as well as cafe owner Biff Brannon and Copeland’s daughter Portia. These characters each deal with their own kind of isolation and loneliness. Directed by Robert Ellis Miller and filmed in Selma, Alabama, the film starts Sondra Locke and Alan Arkin, as well as Stacy Keach and Cicely Tyson.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter begins somewhat enigmatically with a portly man rolling a large metal hoop down the street at night. He smiles giddily and loses interest in the hoop when he comes across a hopscotch game drawn on the sidewalk. Taking off his hat, he hops through it one time like a child would, then next we see him, he is busting out a bakery window downtown with a garbage can lid. With just as much childlike naivete, he ignores the alarm that sounds and begins shoveling sweets into his mouth, so vigorously in fact that he doesn’t realize that two policemen appear to arrest him. This is Antonopoulos, and he is a deaf-mute. Soon after the break-in, the scene shifts to another man who wakes up in the night. This is John Singer (Alan Arkin), who is Antonopuolos’s roommate. Singer gets out of bed turning lights on, looking for his friend, and soon taking to the empty streets to find him. He arrives at the bakery just as the police are driving off with the hungry burglar. Being a deaf-mute himself, Singer cannot shout after the police car that is driving away.

Yet, in the light of day, Singer, Antonopoulos, and their lawyer emerge from the courthouse. The only penalty is a fine, but it probably won’t be so light next time, since Antonopoulos has done things like this before. After attempting to scold his childlike friend, who laughs it off as we would expect, Singer goes to work in a small shop as an engraver. Soon Antonopoulos shows up, though, and the note pinned to his chest explains that the cousin he lives with – a Greek grocer in town – is having him committed to a mental hospital. The friends are separated, and as a kind of consolation, the lawyer urges Singer to move to another town to make a fresh start. Which he does, stoically.

Singer arrives by bus in a small town and walks through a pleasant neighborhood to a large house with a two signs hanging out front. One reads, “Watch Repair: Quick and Cheap” and the other “Room for Rent.” At the door, he meets a young teenage girl – this is Mick Kelly (Sondra Locke) – and he introduces himself with a printed card that tells her he is a deaf-mute. They both seem embarrassed by the interaction, and quickly her mother comes to the door as well. She tells him that yes, they do have a room, and it is $20 a week. (Considering inflation, that was a hefty price for the time.) He gestures that it is agreeable, and Mick’s mother takes him upstairs to see the room.

Mick then goes to another part of the house where her father is sitting at the kitchen table, feeding a baby. Another child – Mick’s brother Bubber – is sitting at the table, too. Mick emerges and begins to tell them who has arrived. We also find out that the room that he has been rented is Mick’s bedroom. Bubber is a boisterous child who asks a lot of questions, and Mick talks down to him. Soon, Mick’s mother appears to say that Singer has taken the room, and her father becomes agitated about it. The fact is that her father is wheelchair bound; we assume there has been some kind of accident, since her mother refers to having no money come into the house for months.

Next we see Mick, she has taken Bubber and the baby on a walk in wagon and has stopped in front of a wealthy house to listen to the music that is coming out of its windows. The two kids play on the lawn, while she languishes on the steps. Just then, another teenager girl Delores comes out, and she knows Mick. They talk for a moment about music, since Mick has questions about pianos and Mozart. Then Delores says she has to go and get ready for another girl’s party. Mick was not invited.

Back at the house that evening, Mick is telling her kid brothers how she will be important one day. Bubber responds without kindness, like a typical little brother. Downstairs, her father is fixing a watch, while her mother sews. Mick wanders around coyly and eventually gets to her point. She wants a piano when they can afford one. Her father seems to be open to it, though her mother’s response is harsh. Mick is clearly a daddy’s girl, and the conversation then turns to her desire to have a party of her own. Her mother continues to be harsh, though when Mick’s frustration turns into a comment about their new boarder, calling him a “cripple,” her father slaps her. In tears, Mick retreats to the porch, and Singer arrives at just the wrong time. He passes by warily after a vague attempt at consoling her.

Then we meet Jake Blount (Stacy Keach) and Biff Brannon. It is evening, and Biff is tending to a handful of customers, Jake being one of them. The others are clean-cut and minding their own business, but Jake is disheveled, unshaven, and swilling beers while he makes comments about injustice to anyone who will listen. When those around him get up and leave, he begins to amble around the restaurant, attempting to engage whoever will put up with it. Eventually he comes to Singer, who is eating his soup alone. Singer’s laissez faire demeanor enables the drunkard’s antics, so Biff comes over to intervene. He tries asking Jake to leave, but ends up forcing him to.

Outside, Jake has a temper tantrum by throwing first his suitcase then himself against the brick wall. He punches and bashes his head until he falls on the ground, bloody. Small groups of both black and white men gather to gawk and mumble about this strange scene, though Singer emerges from the cafe, sees him, and runs to catch a well-dressed older black man carrying a doctor’s bag. At first, Dr. Copeland – another of our characters – resists because the fallen man is white, but finding out that Singer is a deaf-mute, he changes his mind and gives some treatment to Jake’s superficial wounds. We see immediately that Dr. Copeland is a strong and willful man in the way that he pushes the white bystanders aside. The scene fades to black with him examining the would-be patient.

Dr. Copeland then arrives at home after the incident, and there is a young black man playing harmonica on the porch. Dr. Copeland greets him but is ignored. Inside, a young woman – his daughter Portia (Cicely Tyson) – is typing, and they discuss what she is working on. Quickly, the conversation turns to his disdain for the life path that she has taken, marrying the man on the porch instead of making something greater of herself. Her anger at this is obvious, and she stumps him by remarking that she couldn’t be white but he wouldn’t allow her to be black. He answers the harsh remark by inviting her husband into the house cordially.

Meanwhile, Singer has taken Jake Blount back to his little room in the Kelly’s house. After rambling about being in the Army, he passes out in the armchair and is still asleep when we see the two in the morning. Jake is awakened by Mick and Bubber stomping down the stairs, though Singer isn’t bothered by it. Once Jake wakes up, he is confused and tries to talk to Singer, whose back is to him. It takes a moment of conversation before the two understand each other, and Jake marvels several times at how drunk he must have been the night before. He also rambles about needing to find a job, then leaves without really acknowledging the kindness that was done. Singer responds with the same kind of quiet acceptance we’ve already seen from him as Jake leaves.

Across town, we see Singer go into Dr. Copeland’s office in the black section of town. He is auspicious as a white man, and the other people waiting are clearly discomfited by his presence. Dr. Copeland comes out from his examining room, notices Singer, and takes him into another room. Singer has come to pay for Jake’s treatment, and Copeland treats him very harshly, even remarking that he’d better be glad he can’t talk. For the first time, we see Singer agitated, and he storms out. But Dr. Copeland then comes out and begins to jog after him, as best as an older man can, knowing that he can’t call after a deaf-mute to get his attention. Singer is at first startled then miffed by Copeland grabbing his arm from behind, but the conversation turns to something else. Dr. Copeland apologizes and says that he will accept payment after all, but not in the form of money. He has a patient, presumably a black person, who is a deaf-mute, and he needs Singer to “translate” for him. Singer agrees, and the two men part, with Dr. Copeland thanking him and apologizing.

The next series of scenes allows us to Singer and Mick begin to come together. Singer wanders the streets alone in the evening, stops to buy a book, and then sees a crowd going into the local theater. But they are going in to hear the Atlanta Symphony, something there is no sense in him going to do. As he watches the crowd from a distance, he sees Mick among them. She picks up a program for the show off the ground them scampers around the corner of the theater. Singer sees this and follows, looking for her, and finds her on sitting on the stairs and listening through an open backstage door. Rather than bothering her, he goes back to the front of the theater and copies down the names of the pieces that are being played. The next day, when Mick comes come from school, she can hear music coming out of her house, and she runs joyfully in to seek out the source of the sounds. Of course, she discovers them coming from a record playing in Singer’s room – her old room – and after it quits playing, she goes in to speak to him. She wants to flip the record over to the other side but doesn’t want to bother him. He concedes with a gesture, and they sit, together but also alone, as the music plays for Mick and as Singer goes about his one-man chess match.

After a brief scene where we learn that Mick plans to use her meager savings for a party and that Jake has gotten a job at the local carnival, Singer goes to visit Antonopoulos. Getting out of a taxi with a gift under his arm, he goes to the front desk, where he finds out from a nurse that his friend is in the infirmary. The two are clearly excited to see each other. They embrace, then sign to one another. We don’t know what they say, but we understand that Singer is scolding his friend to behave himself. Then Antonopoulos opens his gift: it is a shirt . . . meant to mask an array of sweet treats, which he immediately goes about hiding from the nurses.

Back at the Kelly’s house, Singer comes into his room to find Mick sitting in the dark with the record playing. Of course, he couldn’t hear it and wouldn’t have expected her to be there, so he is startled. They are both embarrassed, and Mick offers to leave, but Singer invites her to stay. They make an awkward attempt at conversation, but Singer’s head isn’t in it and Mick is too young. She goes to leave again, but on closing the door, sees Singer with his face in his hand. She recognizes that he is lonely and re-enters the room to say so. She has never thought before that anyone but her could be lonely. In an effort to cheer him, or perhaps in effort to relieve her own loneliness, she attempts to help him to “hear” and feel and understand music. Mick lights up as she explains music in metaphors and imagery, then stands and plays conductor vibrantly. Ultimately, it does no good. Singer does not connect with her efforts, and Mick is left once again to face the fact that no one around her shares, or even understands, what she feels so passionately. Oddly, too, there is a scant bit of sexual tension between the pair, being alone in what a bedroom that is both hers and his, at night in the quiet, and both lonely. We know that Singer is not the kind of man to exploit such a situation, and we also know that Mick is too naive to have created the situation, though we do see Mick’s vague sense in this scene that she discovering how something intimate could exist between two people.

By now, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is at the midway point, about an hour into a two-hour film. Though it isn’t necessary so in the novel, Singer is clearly our main character. He is the one who ties everyone else together, mainly through what assume to be his empathy. Of course, we have so few words from him that his actions are all we get. Yet, looking at the larger story, we are watching a group of outliers who are attempting to live their lives in a small Southern town. I would say that Mick’s mother probably represents the status quo more than anyone we’ve seen. She is practical in a harsh way, accepting no dreamy ideas or faraway promises. There is only today and what needs to be done right now. Other indications of this that we’ve seen up to this point are the rich girl Delores going to the party Mick wasn’t invited to, the cafe patrons who ignore Jake and who watch smiling as Singer gets accosted, and the bystanders outside the cafe who gawk and wonder at Jake’s self-inflicted violence but do not help him. Of course, Mick’s isolation is augmented not only by her unusually dreamy personality but by the pathetic nature of her family’s predicament due to her father’s inability to work.

Returning to the film, we next see Singer on the porch of a poor home in the black area of town, where he is helping Dr. Copeland to communicate with a deaf-mute. Copeland’s demeanor has changed since we last saw him, from an embittered expression to a more open countenance. They are conversing with the man on his porch about how he needs medical attention before he can attend school to further his education. Leaving there, the doctor drives while Singer leans over from the passenger seat to be able to see his lips move as he talks.

The next scene, which ultimately involves Dr. Copeland and Portia, twists and turns before coming to a head. First, we see Jake working at the carnival as Mick and Singer ride the carousel. Things are jovial and going well. We also see Portia and Willie at the carnival. Things get tense, though, when a white woman falls over on the carousel and Willie catches her, putting his hands on her body to do so. Her husband doesn’t like it but doesn’t say anything. Then, when they get off the ride, the white husband knocks Portia to the ground as he passes, forcing Willie to intervene. The man raises the issue of how Willie caught his wife, implying that the slight against Portia was warranted. The man has friends and Willie is just himself, so Jake intervenes against the aggressors. Though he tries to stand up to them, Jake gets knocked out pretty quickly, and the men go after Willie again. They find him and chase him and Portia to an isolated place outside the carnival, and then attack Willie. Portia tries to help, but there are three white men. Willie holds his own, then a man pulls a knife, which Willie knocks and gets his hands on. Then he stabs one of them as Portia screams. Next we see her, she is crying to her father for help – Willie is in jail – but Dr. Copeland refuses to lie for them and say he was with them and saw the whole thing. Portia regards this as retaliation for her refusal to go to med school and as punishment for marrying Willie.

After the incident, the focus shifts to Mick planning for her party. The house is decorated and she has a pleasant enough time preparing. Even her mother looks kind of happy. Mick even experiments with fantasies of being grown, stuffy socks into her bra to enhance her figure, before taking them back out.

Next, Jake and Singer share a brief scene in the street, after Singer receives a letter from Jake via Biff at the cafe. Jake is moving on. He is disheartened by the way that Willie was treated. He, of all people, knew that the white men started the fight, but he was prevented from testifying at Willie’s trial, being told that his testimony was not needed. Singer seems to want him to stay, but Jake reminds him that he never stays anywhere for very long. Then he goes into the road and sticks his thumb out to hitchhike.

Singer is then at Dr. Copeland’s house/office. The doctor is glad to see him, and they go inside together. Copeland is looking at an x-ray that he has picked up, telling Singer that it is from his very first patient who had TB. The current x-ray shows not a recurrence of TB but lung cancer. Singer takes this in impassively, thinking that it is irrelevant to him, until Copeland fumbles the folder and drops it. When Singer picks it up, it has Dr. Copeland’s name on it. He confides to Singer that he had hated white people for all of his life, and now, at the end of his life, it is a white man who is closest friend. He says that he is facing a cosmic joke, if one has a sense of humor. He also asks Singer not to tell anyone, since his patients might not like the idea that their treatment is coming from a sick man.

Now, we return to Mick’s party. She is smiling and greeting guests. Everyone appears to be having a fine time, and no one is out of hand. Until . . . Bubber and his little friends decide to break out the fireworks and jazz things up. One boy has the idea to light some firecrackers and throw them in the midst of the teenagers so they can use the diversion to steal some of the party food. This leads to some of the teenage boys getting hold of the fireworks, which Mick takes as a huge affront. In her anger over the party taking a direction she hadn’t intended, she throws everyone out angrily, saying “The party is over!” Her mother scolds her, but Mick is steadfast that she did what she should have done.

The next day, Mick is pouting in the front porch, and Singer comes out. She tries to ignore him, but he draws a silly picture of her and gets her to smile. Then we see Mick, Singer, and Bubber walking together, all holding hands, in the town square. It is busy with people. Bubber complains that his fireworks all got shot off, and Mick informs him in a sisterly way that he’s still in trouble. Singer then mediates by offering Bubber a dollar to go buy more fireworks, and Mick concedes. Bubber runs off, and Mick and Singer continue strolling arm-in-arm. From the crowd, Harry appears – Delores’ brother, who came to the party the night before – and he asks Mick on a date to the movies. That night we see them coming out of the movies in the rain.

But the happy scene shifts to Dr. Copeland and Portia. The doctor comes in to find his daughter sitting in his swivel chair in the dark, a bottle of white liquor on the desk. He inquires about what is going on. She is acting strangely. Through a series of intimations and half-statements, she tells him that Willie has lost his leg in the prison camp. He and some other men tried to escape, and Willie was put in leg irons that were too tight. Despite his screams for help, he was left that way for three days. His leg was swollen and had gangrene, so the guards took him to the prison hospital where it was cut off. They would be sending him home after he recovered. Dr. Copeland seems shocked and dismayed as Portia reminds him that she asked for his help to exonerate Willie to begin with. She informs her father that they will be living there with him, that she will be cooking and cleaning, and that she will also be hating him every day.

As Singer has ceased to be the unifying in the element in the story, the scene shifts regularly from one sub-plot to another. For Singer, he is attempting to become Antonopoulos’s legal guardian so the hospital gives him a trial run, letting the big Greek out for one day. Things go well enough until it’s time to go back in the evening, and Antonopoulos becomes very difficult. Singer sees what he will be taking on, since his friend’s voracious eating habits have led to health problems. At Mick’s, she has gotten a job at Woolworth’s, and she and Harry have become an item. We see them kissing on the porch.

It looks like it’s going well, until her mother stops her in the front room to have a serious talk. Her father’s doctor says that he will probably never be up and moving again, so they need her to work during the day and attend school at night. Mick resists, knowing what that will mean for her future prospects. Her father tries to remain hopeful, but her mother squashes any attempt to look on the bright side. Mick is disheartened, but the harsh facts of life are right in front of her. Unable to seek support from her father, who knows that his ill health is the problem, and unwilling to accept her mother’s uber-realistic world view, Mick flees upstairs and falls onto Singer’s chest to cry. The stoic man seems not to know what to do about this but allows her to weep.

Across town, Willie is at the barber shop getting cleaned up. Dr. Copeland is there with him, and soon Portia and Singer arrive, too. Willie is in goods spirits, as is his father-in-law, until Portia comes and start speaking loudly and harshly to her father in tones of veiled animosity. Frustrated, he leaves and begins to stride down the downtown streets. Singer follows him, and he says that he must make a “formal protest” against what happened to Willie, for the purpose of re-ingratiating himself with Portia. He leaves Singer then and goes into the courthouse, asking to see the judge.

Meanwhile, Mick is swimming in the local creek with Harry. They splash around, then go lay in the sun on a blanket. Soon they begin to kiss, as Harry slowly begins to remove her top.

Later, at Dr. Copeland’s home, Portia and Willie are relaxing when there is a knock at the door. It is Singer. He is emphatically trying to get Portia’s attention, while she is telling him to go away. He is so agitated that he is even grunting and making odd noises with the voice he doesn’t know how to use. In answer to Willie’s pleas to let him in, Portia unlatches the door, and Singer takes her forcibly to the office, where he turns on the x-ray lamp. We know that he will break his promise to keep the doctor’s cancer a secret.

After that tense scene, we are taken back to the creek where Mick is putting her clothes back on. We understand as Harry returns to her from the woods that she has lost her virginity. Neither of them know what to do or say. Harry suggests that they’ve committed a sin, then asks if they should get married. Mick tells him no, that she doesn’t think she’ll ever get married. As the daylight gets dim, she says that they should probably get home.

Ultimately, Dr. Copeland is left sitting in the hall outside of the judge’s office as the secretary covers her typewriter and the cleaning man shows up. He stops the sheriff that he inquired with earlier, and the sheriff tells him that the judge went home an hour and a half ago. The sheriff is smirking when he says it. For all of his personal strength and for all of his status in the community, Dr. Copeland was easily ignored by the white people choose to disregard him. When he leaves the courthouse, he hears Portia calling after him. She appears with Singer and hugs him tearfully.

In the film’s final ten minutes, this mostly sad story is wrapped up. Mick arrives home after being with Harry, and Singer is there with a new record for her to listen to. However, Mick’s mind is not on him or on music, and she resists his insistence that she come receive her surprise. Instead he is left to prop the record against a door frame for her find later. Singer leaves the house to wander a bit, and then we see him on another visit to see Antonopoulos. This time, though, the nurse gets the doctor to share the bad news. His friend has died. That evening, after he has paced back and forth n the cemetery for a while, Singer turns off his bedroom light and takes his own life by turning a gun on himself. Mick, who is downstairs sewing on the porch, hears the shot and goes upstairs to find him dead.

The final scene in the movie has Mick and Dr. Copeland both at Singer’s grave at the same time. They have not met, of course, because Copeland would not have come to their house to see Singer, as Singer had come to his house to see him. They mused on the mysterious man’s life for a moment. Copeland says that, though they had all brought their problems to him, they had not been there for Singer to help with his problems. Mick disagrees somewhat, saying as an acknowledgment of her innocence and selfishness that she never even considered that he had any problems. But she would never forget him.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is probably my favorite novel, so my comments on this film are tainted by that affinity. I’ve read the novel more times than I can count, since I used to offer it as a summer reading option to my students. That said, this film is a disappointment to me as a reader, though I admit that, as adaptations go, it’s among the better ones. The loneliness that is the central theme of the novel is captured here as best as a visual medium can, probably because the casting and performances are so strong. However, as with any film, things had to be cut, altered, and otherwise changed to fit a two-hour time frame.

The main things that I noticed as being cut are: the virtual elimination of Biff Brannon’s storyline, the removal of Jake Blount’s bizarre appearance and radical ideals, the excision of the long spoken by Jake and Dr. Copeland to Singer, and the elimination of Bubber’s subplot. In the novel, Biff Brannon is really the male character who kind of has a crush on Mick Kelly. Biff runs the cafe alone, while his terminally ill wife convalesces in their attached apartment, and he fixates on Mick out of loneliness. That twisted and inappropriate sexual tension is shifted in the film to Singer’s character, since Biff is barely seen. Second, the character of Jake Blount is reduced in the film to a swarthy drunkard with a big mouth. His bizarre appearance is not mentioned, and working-class socialist rhetoric is not there. In the novel, Jake’s physique is strangely out of proportion, and his rants about social injustice go on and on. None of that radicalism appears here, and Jake is a minor character. Third, Dr. Copeland’s equally longwinded rants about racial justice are reduced to a few comments here and there. We get the sense in the film that his character is fixated on race, but the novel’s intelligently crafted monologues to Portia and to Singer are not here for the viewer, which makes Portia’s retorts lack context. Finally, there is Bubber, the little brother. In the novel, Bubber is always there among the kids who are playing up and down the street, until he accidentally shoots a little girl in the face. Bubber is a reminder of childhood innocence in the novel, and this incident changes both him and the neighborhood. In this film, Bubber is something like comic relief, and the shooting incident is left out . . . Enough about the novel. This adaptation is a solid one, generally, though it does have us seeing the 1940s via the 1960s, but keep in mind that the film came out the year that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Sondra Locke is perfect as Mick, and Alan Arkin is perfect as Singer. The plot is mostly held up, though for the purposes of visual storytelling, some of it is altered or rearranged.

Though I hadn’t picked up on it this way, the Watch TCM website has this as the one-liner describing the film: “The people of a small Southern town learn the meaning of ‘love thy neighbor’ when a kindhearted deaf-mute moves there.” That could be true about the film’s core message, rather than viewing it as a film about the various forms that loneliness takes. While I agree that Singer’s character is emblematic of The Golden Rule, often treating other people well and being visibly frustrated at their lack of a reciprocal kindness, I don’t get the sense that he does it out of love. It seems like it’s done more out of decency, or perhaps out of a mildly self-serving desire to make friends. Relating this, though, to the idea of a Southern movie, it wouldn’t be hard to argue that Singer, who shows no inclination toward organized religion, is actually a true Christian among people who might claim to be. The problem, or counter-argument, would be that none of the characters claim to be. Religion is absent from this film adaptation, which is very usual for a story that is supposed to show the Depression-era South.

As a document of the South, the film The Heart is a Lonely Hunter does not do much to comment on the loneliness of the outsider in a Depression-era small-town culture in the South. Because the meat within the novel’s text isn’t there, what we see are the surface-level elements of the characters’ lives. Mick is not a typical Southern girl, since her father is crippled and unemployed, and since she is so dreamy, whimsical, and eccentric. Singer is a pariah to most people, though his value is seen clearly among people who take the time to know him. Jake is a loose cannon, not a frustrated social justice warrior, and Dr. Copeland is reduced to a bitter outlier rather than a crusader. We get a glimpse of the Southern racism that we expect in the carnival scene where Willie is attacked, but many of the culture’s subtleties are too subtle for the average moviegoer to pick up on, like the fact that Mick doesn’t know who Dr. Copeland is because he wouldn’t have visited their house. Personally, despite the Southern-ness of the novel, I would say that this isn’t a movie that exudes Southern-ness but just a film that is set in the South and contains Southern characters. Unfortunately, too much of the substance was deflated or extracted, leaving mostly the superficial remnants for audiences to watch. Without that depth, we see a group of unhappy people going through the motions in a small Southern town.