Word: carneys
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Looking at Art Carney's mournful Popeye face is to encounter the resignation of an aging bullfighter contemplating his last fight. Only this time Art has won both ears and the tail. He was the surprise winner of an Oscar for his gentle, ruminative portrayal of a 72-year-old Odysseus adrift with his orange cat in Harry and Tonto...
Thurberesque Comedy. In true Hollywood fashion, Carney's award is belated justice. In 1965 it was Carney who made immortal the finicky Felix in Neil Simon's The Odd Couple on Broadway only to be elbowed out of the movie by more bankable Jack Lemmon. If anyone doubted the injustice, two nights after the Oscars, ABC aired a Jules Feiffer sketch of Carney giving a performance of Thurberesque comedy as a harried househusband, a timid man all but overcome by familial concupiscence...
...Carney, 56, is as astonished as everyone else by the award. "It was the greatest moment of my life," he acknowledges. Harry was his first leading role in a feature movie-and of course he was nobody's first choice. It was written for another Irishman, James Cagney, who turned it down. Twentieth Century-Fox then suggested Laurence Olivier, even Frank Sinatra, before Director Paul Mazursky called on Art. Even Carney was not sure he wanted it. "I liked Josh Greenfeld's script, but face it, I felt insecure playing a 72-year-old man." But his wife...
HARRY'S MENTAL and physical fitness is the chief weakness of the film. Art Carney makes Harry lively, sharp-tongued, and open-minded; his performance is excellent but he does not portray an old man, only a young man who happens to be 75 years old. Harry and Tonto thus trivializes the problems of the elderly--the worst of them seems to be incontinence--and makes answers look too easy. If only our old people didn't have to face things like chronic illness and mental deterioration, the film seems to say, they could lead happy, useful lives...
...childhood sweetheart grown senile (Geraldine Page) is one of the few episodes in which the film touches base with reality. Joshua Mostel, as one of Harry's grandchildren, plays the role of a deadpan mixed-up kid who takes a vow of silence with icy, despicable correctness. And Art Carney, though not as funny as he was in The Honeymooners, salvages some dignity for the film even when it seems most intent to fall on its face...