This 1974 movie, Harry and Tonto is billed as a movie about an older gentleman who takes a road trip across country with his cat, Tonto. That really does not describe the movie very well.
Starring Art Carney, of Honeymooners fame, who won an Oscar for this role, the movie is about an older man who is displaced out of the apartment he has lived in for years in New York City. He raised his children there, his wife died there, and he hoped to live out his life quietly there with his cat. But the city was tearing the apartment building down to put up a parking lot. So Harry had to go.
He first tries living with one of his sons in Long Island. When that does not work he plans to fly to Chicago to see his daughter. But the airlines will not let Tonto on-board, so he takes a bus. When the bus driver does not want to stop to let Tonto pee, harry buys a used car and continues on. Seeing his daughter in Chicago, he moves on with various characters to Arizona, Las Vegas and LA to see his youngest son.
See, it sounds like a road trip. But it is really about growing old in America. The loneliness, the uprooting of a life, the disconnection. It is about a nice decent man, not settling for the standard dehumanizing effect of old age. He makes new friends, he decides to live, instead of just crumbling away.
Art Carney played this role PERFECT! With a grace and dignity, and acceptance of others and how they choose to live, and a humor that cannot be denied, and a sorrow that will make your eyes well up, he is amazing.
This is not sentimental in the traditional sense. No schmaltzy music. But it confronts the issues of head on, and includes the sorrow as well as the humor and joy, the tears and the laughter.
His faithful friend Tonto, along the ride the whole way.
A really nice movie, I would highly recommend it.
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