“The Saint of Fort Washington”
Titanic - Jack Dawson won his ticket in a card game and specifically tells his dinner companions that at the moment his “address” is HMS Titanic.
Oooh, I think Wendy and Lucy is a strong entry here in terms of being a quality drama about homelessness.
The protagonists of Sound of Metal spend good chunks of the movie in various states of housing insecurity.
It’s unclear whether the punk band in Green Room have homes to go back to, but they are on a shoestring couch-surfing tour that seems to have been going on way too long. Plus it’s just a fun, wackadoo movie.
It kind of depends on one’s definition of “homeless”.
Two that have families who choose to live unconventionally, off the land:
Leave No Trace
Captain Fantastic
One could argue that in each of these, they’ve created a “home”, so may not technically be “homeless”.
“The Stone Pillow” is reportedly good Stone Pillow - Wikipedia
Starring Rutger Hauer, who was also in “Surviving the Game”, where a homeless Ice-T is hunted by Rutger and Gary Busey.
“Man’s Castle” - pre-code starring Spencer Tracy… It’s on YouTube…
Oh yeah I remember that and thought it was pretty good at the time.
Aladdin.
Jane Eyre - Jane is living with her aunt and cousins at the beginning, shipped off to Lowood to hopefully die, a servant at Thornfield Hall, wandering homeless on the moor until taken in by the Rivers siblings (unknowingly cousins of hers) until she inherits a fortune and returns to Rochester.
Many movie adaptations.
StG
Would Art Carney’s role in the sublime Harry and Tonto qualify?
In most of Going Down the Road, the two protagonists manage to rent out what looks like the most disgusting hole-in-the-wall apartment in the History of All Apartments, but eventually they can’t make rent, and are bascially going down the road, once again.
Bleak, but absolutely riveting in its grainy, depressing bleakness. Seen it a bunch of times.
But if you want bleak? Yeah?
May I fashion you, then, with:
Edna, the Inebriate Woman
And here’s the full movie! Lucky you!
This one just drips with osmotic indigent toxicity.
You will requre a hazmatting after viewing.
“I’M NOT A VAGRANT!!!”
Would Chauncey Gardiner qualify?
The rootlessness of Nicholson’s character in Five Easy Pieces or …Cuckoo’s Nest?
The excellent Richard Farsnworth in Straight Story.
Sarrazin and Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
I would say definitely yes to Chance. When the movie begins he is living in his employer’s townhouse. Once he dies he is on the street with no where to go.
True, but then I was thinking that he’d most likely, by film’s end, be ending up - possibly for good - in some not bad digs.
Depends on if the “rules” are that the protagonist is homeless throughout the movie. He was homeless at the beginning with only the old suit on his back.
Indeed, point taken.
Forgive me for a “what’s this movie?” post, but there was a silent (except for the last moment) film from around 1990 where the protagonist was a homeless man who finds a lost little girl. When he can’t find a parent, he begins taking care of her. At the end her mother is found and he returns to the homeless encampment alone.
The lead actor, who also wrote and directed IIRC, is Black, as was the little girl. I remember his first name being Charles. I originally saw it at an arthouse and have never seen it since.
That’s all I got. A little help?
does my man Godfrey count as drama?
Also, there was a french movie done as a documentary in which a college-aged girl ends up a homeless vagrant who has “misadventures” until she dies from exposure in a vineyard …
The main characters in Midnight Cowboy spend most of the movie illegally squatting in an apartment of an abandoned building, but they appear to have multiple rooms and are more or less protected from the elements and unknown to authorities. I’m not sure if you can really call them “homeless” in the way that the word is typically used, because of this situation. They’re not living on “the street” exactly, although they spend most of their time literally on the street, but they have a place to go back to. Not sure if they qualify or not.
You named my #1 and #4 favorite movies ever, with “Harry and Tonto”, who I don’t think would qualify. He had his apartment, and the minute he left, he always had somewhere to go. Visiting each kids, and having enough to stay in a motel in between his drives. Wonderfully acted, written, and some good social commentary with a nice free-flowing story. A good time capsule.
“Who’s Vice-President this week?”
“Who cares?”
“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” would qualify. To me, it was a last effort, especially for Fonda’s character. I think it’s a great metaphor for the American system of exploitation, the spectator who pays to see them run in circles, with no point in sight… Even the winner is a loser! We see Gig Young corrupt Fonda’s character sexually, just to win, after losing so much.
Sidewalk Stories.