Monty @ 100: The martyrdom of "Lonelyhearts"

by Cláudio Alves

For the first half of his career, Montgomery Clift typified an image of restless youth and tragic beauty onscreen. Many of his early films found Clift playing young traumatized soldiers or men embroiled in doomed romance, lively characters whose nervous energy electrified the frame. The second era of Monty films, starting with 1957's Raintree County, saw a transformation of his persona. Nathaniel previously explored some inklings of masochism in the narratives of From Here to Eternity and The Young Lions, but Clift's next few projects solidified him as a paragon of cinematic suffering.

Perhaps no project better encapsulates the idea of Montgomery Clift as a saint-like figure, a martyr, than the Vincent J. Donehue's 1958 film Lonelyhearts…

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