Harry And Tonto (1974)
Cats: Comedy, Drama, New York| 
Art Carney won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Harry And Tonto. During his acceptance speech he thanked everyone he could or should and then thanked his agent who said ” but you are old”. This was one if my earliest memories of seeing someone win a Best Actor Oscar for a movie I actually saw in the theater. As a kid I loved the movie; as an adult I love it more.
Harry is a 72 year old widower who is losing his world. He is being evicted from his apartment because the building is being torn down. The only apartment that he can afford is a hovel still occupied by it’s recently evicted tenant. His best friend Jacob (Herbert Berghof) dies and he is not at all comfortable living with his son. So he decides to cross the country by bus with his beloved cat Tonto and thus sets off a sort of septuagenarian odyssey. The quest is to reach his other son in Los Angles who is allegedly a sucessful movie producer and the journey becomes a sort of tragicomic Iliad.
The movie begins on the Upper Westside. This is were Harry and his deceased wife raised their children. Harry does not want to go. It is amazing how some things do not change. What is amazing is how much the neighborhood is in the movie. I vividly remember watching them shoot the film, a good chunk of it on 111th and 112th and Broadway. There was an elderly couple who owned the newstand that still exists in the westside of Broadway and 108th street. The husband, Arnold, got himself in the movie and had dialogue with Art Carney. When Harry buys a paper from Arnold, he asks him “who’s Vice President this week?” Arnold replied “who cares”. Of course the day after I saw the film I had to go into Arnold’s store and ask him that very question. I always wondered if Art Carney improvised the exchange because Arnold was no actor.
Paul Mazursky co-wrote and directed this picture. Mazursky can be a master of finding humor in the most tragic and upsetting situations. See “Enemies - A Love Story” as this proves my point about Mazursky. The whole film has a comic overtone with true sadness below the surface. We do care about Harry and Tonto and we hope that once he gets to L.A. he will find peace and a home. We want him to get there quicker (for his sake) but we do not mind the journey that the film takes us on. This is very much to Paul Mazursky’s credit, that he crafted this beautifully paced tale.
This gem will be on The Fox Movie Channel Friday February 16th at 4:00PM. As a 12 year old I loved this movie. I am sure that I did not get all the levels that Mazursky achieves but I got enough. There is some drug use, sex and some language but there is no violence. So set your DVRs, DVD burners and (if you are living in the 70’s) VCRs and get this one.
