Harry and Tonto (1974)

The “road movie” has seldom traveled a route so rich in humor, pathos, kindness, compassion, weirdness, and common-sense love than the path taken by Harry and Tonto (1974). Harry is a man reaching the end of his life, retired, widowed, living alone with his cat, Tonto, in the big-city building where all his adult years had passed and where his adult children had been reared. When Harry’s home is razed and replaced with a parking lot, the elderly fellow soon recognizes that his profound and whimsical journey has at least one more leg to go. He packs up the cat and heads cross-country, communing with his family, his friends, and all the assorted freaks he meets along the way.