Harry and Tonto

Seventy-two-year-old Harry loses his New York apartment to demolition and takes to the road with his cat Tonto. First to his son's, then to his daughter in Chicago, finally to Los Angeles. Along the way he meets hitchhikers, old lovers and his own age. Paul Mazursky directed and wrote with Josh Greenfeld. Art Carney plays Harry. Carney won the Best Actor Oscar for it, and the list of who he beat is still discussed: Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Albert Finney. Carney was fifty-six at the time and used makeup and an altered walk to play a man in his seventies. The tone leans on the road movie, but the point is not landscape: it is about how ageing is made invisible in America. The cat is the story's real partner; there is not a single section that proceeds without Tonto. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet seventies American films and stories about growing old. Who it is not for: anyone after pace; the film moves step by step.