The track doesn't last long enough for Mazursky's constant self - congratulation to begin to grate, though I was bothered by his definitive deconstruction of the film: there is
a certain sense of ambiguity of meaning and purpose that is part of Harry and Tonto's meagre charm.
The process involved, as I see it,
certain fundamental transformations
of the inherited manner: the introduction
of intense color into a starkly reserved and ascetic style, producing a peculiarly American combination
of the hedonistic and the puritanical; the invention
of a vocabulary
of affective shapes, which, though vaguely recalling Arp's biomorphism, are distinctly personal; the use
of the frame to implement
ambiguities in figure - ground relationships and facilitate a new and unusual
sense of scale.