Carson McCullers on TCM

[moira finnie]

Writer Carson McCullers is the focus of this evening's programming on TCM, which includes some of the rarely broadcast adaptations of her Southern stories, filled with loneliness and the pain of unrequited love, but also with sharply observed moments of humor. A storyteller whose own life would not be credible in any novel, she brought terrific empathy to her tales of misfits, children, men and women struggling to get through life without losing hope. When, after Reflections in a Golden Eye was published, she was asked how she could write about such troubled (and troubling) people so much, McCullers quietly explained, "I am so immersed in my characters that their motives are my own. When I write about a thief, I become one; when I write about Captain Penderton,[in Reflections of a Golden Eye] I become a homosexual man. I become the characters I write about and I bless the Latin poet Terence who said 'Nothing human is alien to me.'" The lineup of films listed below begin at 8pm ET on TCM. You can read more about this theme at TCM here.

I am fond of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Mostly because of Chuck McCann and Alan Arkin. And Reflections in a Golden Eye has one of Brando's better later career performances. Robert Forster is wonderful in that one too.

8:00 PM
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (1968)
A deaf mute changes the lives of all he meets. Cast: Alan Arkin, Sondra Locke, Stacy Keach. Dir: Robert Ellis Miller. C-124 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format

10:15 PM
The Member of the Wedding (1952)
When her brother marries, a 12-year-old girl faces the awkward pains of adolescence. Cast: Julie Harris, Ethel Waters, Brandon de Wilde. Dir: Fred Zinnemann. BW-89 mins, TV-G, CC

12:00 AM
The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe (1991)
A small-town eccentric opens a café in her decaying home. Cast: Vanessa Redgrave, Keith Carradine, Rod Steiger. Dir: Simon Callow. C-101 mins, TV-14

2:00 AM
Reflections In A Golden Eye (1967)
A military officer becomes obsessed with an enlisted man. Cast: Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Brian Keith. Dir: John Huston. C-109 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format

Psst, don't tell anybody, but Carson McC.'s fellow Southern writer Flannery O'Connor has a pretty decent movie that follows this block of programming at 4 am. One of John Huston's last and one of Harry Dean Stanton's better films, along with Paris, Texas.

4:00 AM
Wise Blood (1979)
An ambitious Southern boy tries to set himself up as a street preacher. Cast: Brad Dourif, Dan Shor, Harry Dean Stanton. Dir: John Huston. C-106 mins, TV-14

[ChiO]

Last night was the first time I had watched THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER since its 1968 release. At 17, I found it profoundly moving and my favorite movie in a year when it seemed that few movies didn't get seen. There was some fear of disappointment because, looking back, it has all of the ingredients of a Stanley Kramer movie at its worst -- tortured souls aplenty, racism, persons with physical and mental disabilities, small town provincialism (in the South no less) and an obvious message to bestow upon we unenlightened viewers.

It is a more hauntingly beautiful film than I remembered (James Wong Howe didn't lose much over his years, did he?). While no film can be perfect, I found no nits to pick. Sentimental, yes; but no sentimentality. And no preachiness. The performances that I remembered fondly -- particularly of Alan Arkin and Sondra Locke -- were still marvelous, and now those of Chuck McCann, Stacy Keach, Percy Rodrigues and Cicely Tyson are now better etched into memory.

And Robert Ellis Miller also signed SWEET NOVEMBER that year. Yikes! But one out of two ain't bad, especially when the one is this touching.

[klondike]

I agree with ChiO - THIALH is a hauntingly poignant movies, with not just one or two voices speaking (npi) to the heart of the human condition, and the many, often hidden, faces of private happiness & lasting fulfilment.
But what has always puzzled me is why Alan Arkin, who indisputedly leads a highly-talented cast utilizing their A-game, is heard to reference this role so very seldom.
I understand that he is a quiet & deliberate actor, but I would hardly call him modest, or privacious, or an introvert . . . what gives?

[JackFavell]

I saw The Heart is a Lonely Hunter last when I was maybe sixteen. I could NOT believe the ending - it shocked me so much that I remembered this movie for years and years. I cried and cried. I don't think I had ever seen Alan Arkin before, and I am so glad that I saw this movie of his first. I didn't remember most of the plot of it, andI'm glad - it was like watching a new movie, mostly.

Arkin is just brilliant at playing "other" here. I still think Alan Arkin is one of the greatest unsung actors of all time. His work on this movie is so good, every reaction is small and under the surface - the flicker of thought passing behind his eyes - this is the kind of acting I love. He doesn't pander or strive, there is no grandstanding. You aren't sure where things are going to go. The scene where he is pounding on the door, trying to tell Cicely Tyson to come with him was out of this world good - showing how scary and different he must have seemed to these people, their fear of him, but also the care and the sweetness in his soul. His observations from the silent, alienated, lonely place he lives in are etched quite finely in the movie and I was surprised at how it still worked for me, even though I could see the mechanics of it a little better now.

The other actor who I really enjoyed was Percy Rodriguez - the humiliation and pain he felt as he walked his fine line. Cicely Tyson as always was good.