Harry and Tonto
                              
Director: Paul Mazursky
Year: 1974
Rating: 5.5
I have to guess that Steinbeck's Travels with Charley was on the mind of the filmmakers when they produced this one. Except they switch the dog for a cat. A cat. Nothing against cats - growing up we had Dinkey for years until we went to Ankara and he went running off after those Turkish felines and never came back - and we had Tickery for 23 years from Turkey to Afghanistan to Iran. But I would not make a film in which a cat was the co-star. They are not very exciting. Their lives are sleep, food and more sleep. Sometimes they twitch in their sleep with dreams of chasing mice. But this is a sweet, leisurely somewhat melancholy film about getting old. Harry says at one point, "The worst thing about getting old is seeing all those you care about die". Truer words were never said.

 

Art Carney plays Harry. Tonto, I guess plays Tonto. Carney was 56 at the time playing a man into his 70s and is terrific - and he received the Academy Award for Best Actor that year. Against Al Pacino in Godfather II, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express and Dustin Hoffman in Lennie. Carney must have been the most surprised man in the world that night. But he was loved for Norton and I expect that played in the voting. He wasn't in many films that anyone remembers though The Late Show is terrific. So, I am happy for him. The rest of those guys had plenty more chances but damn, those were some fine performances.

 

This may be the least dramatic film ever made. When Tonto disappears for a few minutes, it is the thing of great theater. He is taking a whiz. Harry is old, set in his ways, his wife has died, his kids have moved away, he spends his days taking Tonto on walks and sitting in the park talking to anyone who will listen. His apartment is set for demolition and his son takes him in, but it is crowded and one son (Josh Mostel) has taken a vow of silence and the other (Cliff De Young) is a radical. He can't take it and decides to go visit his daughter (Ellen Burstyn) in Chicago. He skips the plane and goes by bus but they stop for the cat to pee and the bus can't wait. So, his adventure begins.



He buys a car and takes on a young female hitchhiker (Melanie Mayron), visits an old lover (Geraldine Fitzgerald) who has entered into Alzheimer's, stays with his sister but moves on to LA. Gets picked up by a prostitute (Barbara Rhodes) and gets laid, goes to Vegas, gets thrown in jail where he meets Chief Dan George and finally gets to his other son (Larry Hagman). It is all fine - some terrific actors in small parts - and it is a film with the only unknown being whether they will kill off Harry at the end. It is directed by Paul Mazursky who was very hot at the time making these idiosyncratic films like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Blume in Love, Next Stop Greenwich Village and An Unmarried Woman.