For what is an extremely cinematic criminal vocation, there aren’t a lot of great movies about pickpockets. There’s Pickup on South Street (1953), which is more espionage noir than pickpocket movie; Bresson’s austere classic Pickpocket (1959), which is hardly a barrel of laughs; and Johnnie To’s marvellous trifle Sparrow (2008)1. You might even include Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise (1932) if you’re feeling spicy (and if you’ve just watched Trouble in Paradise, you probably are). Usually pickpockets are caper-adjacent characters, tools to be used in the service of a larger confidence trick or heist. This is a shame, because as sleight-of-hand masters go, I’d rather see a thief than a magician any day of the week.
Harry In Your Pocket2 is resolutely a pickpocket movie. There are no overarching capers here: this is a movie about the day-to-day dips of a professional wire mob. The eponymous Harry (James Coburn) is chief cannon, aided and abetted by the wily old steer Casey (Walter Pidgeon), who introduces Harry to a couple of potential protégés in the form of amateur pickpocket Ray (Michael Sarrazin) and recently skint Sandy (Trish Van Devere), who’s tagging along not only to make sure she gets the $200 Ray owes her, but also because she’s attracted by the prospect of the larcenous life. Harry and Casey teach the young couple in the ways of the stall – acting as distraction so Harry can make the dip – and offer 20% of the group take. While Ray struggles to pick up the basics, Sandy turns out to be a natural, primarily because her short skirts prove sufficiently diverting to a range of oversexed male marks3. A visit from the cannon squad4 in Seattle pushes the mob on to Canada and then to Salt Lake City, where Ray’s ambitions to become more than a stall, Harry’s interest in Sandy, and their growing reputation spell disaster for the mob.
If you’re struggling with the cant in the above paragraph, don’t worry – Harry In Your Pocket does a sterling job of defining the slang throughout, mostly in early scenes using Sandy as audience surrogate. Producer/director Bruce Geller and writers James Buchanan and Ronald Austin made their bones in network television, and their combined experience detailing elaborate set-ups through the dossier scenes in Mission: Impossible works well here. Unlike the television work, however, Harry In Your Pocket isn’t overly concerned about plot: Geller and Co. are interested in the process and the quartet of characters at the film’s core. Unfortunately, both are treated in broad strokes, with no significant exploration of the technique (most of the dips are seen in long shot) and characters who suffer from a near-terminal lack of development.
This last point wouldn’t be a huge issue if Harry In Your Pocket fulfilled the promise of its trailer (above) and that exclamation mark on the poster, both of which point to lighter fare than it actually is. As it stands, the film is neither comedy nor drama, with a central love triangle that never really articulates love beyond mild attraction and lacks the intrigue to make it truly interesting. There is both a solid, process-driven crime movie and a mildly subversive, frothy romantic comedy buried in Harry In Your Pocket, but neither is allowed to take the lead, instead relying on surface appeal and the charisma of the performers.
And there is a fair amount of charisma in play here, which prevents the movie from being a complete failure. Coburn cuts a debonair figure in the standard Coburn way – he’s an actor we’ll be returning to, and he’s a tough one to properly gauge. On the one hand, he was a trained actor (under Stella Adler, no less), but he rarely had the opportunity to flex those acting muscles, instead relegated to quasi-star status and the persona of hipster thug. While he’d enjoyed an artistically (if not commercially) successful 1973, with turns in both Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and The Last of Sheila, he'd soon be playing second fiddle to Charles Bronson in Hard Times (1975) and Charlton Heston in The Last Hard Men (1976). In Harry In Your Pocket, he’s a Teflon-coated professional, a “pro bastard”, whose primary role is to bark orders at his team and provide a masculine counterpoint to Michael Sarrazin’s Ray.
As for Sarrazin, he’s fine in what is a thankless role. When he’s not being derided as big and clumsy, he’s cursed with a petulant attitude or a variety of gormless expressions. Ray is clearly nowhere near talented enough to be a professional cannon, nor is he charming enough to warrant Sandy’s attention as a romantic prospect. In fact, the movie goes out of its way to undermine him at every turn, whether it’s his ham-handed attempts at pickpocketing, his bizarre decision to keep the ID of every mark he’s ever dipped, or his impotence with Sandy. It is of course his fault that the mob unravels, through his overweening ambition and desperate incompetence, which makes the ending all the more incomprehensible, in which Harry essentially sacrifices himself to ensure Ray and Sandy have their thoroughly undeserved happy-ever-after.
It’s entirely possible that Harry botches the job for Sandy’s sake. And Trish Van Devere is one of the highlights of Harry In Your Pocket, a charismatic performer whose career was somewhat overshadowed by her then-husband George C. Scott and her performance in this film by a series of brown satin mini-dresses and hot pants5. While she lacks chemistry with Coburn - or, perhaps more accurately, he lacks chemistry with her – she’s never less than engaging, and she’s one of the two cast members who could easily turn the film into a sparky caper comedy with the right script.
The other actor is the estimable Walter Pidgeon, he of Mrs Miniver (1943) and Madame Curie (1943) fame, a stalwart of gentle stability, here an affable old scoundrel with a coke habit6, whose arrest makes the whole thing unravel. Pidgeon alone is worth the price of entry here, in a part that could so easily have been a sentimental slog to sit through. We first meet Casey dipping a deaf guy at the airport; later, he’ll rail against these new-fangled credit cards that are ruining his roguish business and the younger generation of thieves who lack discipline and would rather “bop old ladies over the head and run away with their purses.”
If Harry In Your Pocket succeeds, it is because of these performances, as well as some fun sequences of the team in action. The locations (Seattle, Victoria and Salt Lake City) are also lovingly shot, though the trip on the Queen of Victoria at the halfway mark is borderline intolerable (slow-motion seagull feeding, anyone?) and Lalo Schifrin’s score has a tendency to overwhelm. It something of a curate’s egg, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it certainly didn’t deserve the critical reaction it got. While Lawrence Van Gelder (The New York Times) was largely positive, other reviews suggest Geller may have run over the family pet at some point, with David Rosenbaum (The Boston Phoenix) declaring that Geller directed “with all the care and sensitivity of a deranged plumber” and accusing Michael Sarrazin of “moon-calf mummery”, and Michael McKegney (The Village Voice) denouncing the movie as “an utter failure” with a “trio of narcissistic non-actors” (I presume Pidgeon was excused). Luckily for those particular critics, they wouldn’t have to suffer through another Bruce Geller film - he died in a plane crash only four years later.
Even at its worst, Harry In Your Pocket is a mildly diverting crime flick with a few fun performances. It would be almost immediately forgotten, thanks to another little crime movie about con men that would come out only five months later, but it’s a fine example of an above-average programmer. Just don’t go into it expecting any more than that.
Next Up: “No one knew she was an undercover policewoman. Including the detective who killed her.”
To break remit for a second, all To’s movies are worth a watch, but Sparrow’s duel in the rain finale is a particular highlight.
The poster does call it Harry In Your Pocket!, but I can’t bring myself to use the exclamation mark – truly the office karaoke of punctuation.
All of whom bear more than a passing resemblance to Bixby Snyder.
One of whom is Tony Giorgio, technical advisor, former professional pickpocket and sleight-of-hand magician. He recommended keeping your wallet in your thigh pocket “because it’s right near your balls, and no pickpocket is going to reach for your balls just to make a few bucks.” Street smarts!
She is also – like Robert Culp before her – one of my favourite Columbo murderers, so she pretty much gets a free pass in the Banks household.
“At my age, it’s good for you. Good for the digestion, good for the blood pressure.” Clearly not a doctor.
I'll have to look for this one, and Sparrow. I imagine they aren't easy to find. Our sociology teacher in school knew a guy called Benny the Dip, who recommend the left front pocket as the "safest" but they could pick any pocket, with a good stall as partner.
I've never heard of this one before. Will have to check it out now.