Lonelyhearts is less than faithful to Nathanael West's novella in being ultimately redemptive where the original could never be, as well as in extending the plot almost beyond recognition. But Lonelyhearts deserves to be taken on its own terms, with unusually fine casting and performances by Montgomery Clift, playing the role of the tortured lonelyhearts columnist as if in a trance; and Robert Ryan, whose editor Shrike is etched in acid. Maureen Stapleton as Fay Doyle strikes a Westian note of unwarranted pity, while Betty (Dolores Hart) reminds us that West wrote of this all-American girlfriend, "Her sureness was based on the power to limit experience arbitrarily." Finally, what the screenplay takes away from the original, John Alton's cinematography puts back, with a vengeance. He subverts all his own rules, as when, in a bar scene (of which there are many) he douses the vulnerable with direct light. "More women are murdered with bad light than with any other weapon" Alton lamented in his book. As well he knows.