THE ONLY LIVING PICKPOCKET IN NEW YORK

 

Money has gone virtual, theft has gone digital. Only the pickpocket has remained analog. 

In The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, Noah Segan entrusts John Turturro with the task of portraying a dying profession. Harry Lehman still knows how to slip a hand into a pocket, but the problem is that there may be nothing left inside. Technology has transformed money into an immaterial entity and the wallet into an accessory that retains above all an archaeological value. The pickpocket, in short, risks becoming the only professional forced to contend with the absence of cash. 

Naturally, theft has not disappeared. It has simply changed scale, tools and clients. The new thieves no longer need to brush against a jacket on the subway: they can operate remotely, steal enormous sums and leave their victims wondering whether they have been robbed or have simply made a mistake. From this point of view, progress has brought about a considerable improvement in the working conditions of crime. No more bags to rummage through, no risk of being recognized, and far more goods available. 

Harry, by contrast, represents an artisanal form of illegality. His work requires skill, an understanding of bodies, powers of observation and a certain intimacy with other people’s everyday lives. His is a form of theft that still takes place within the physical space of human relationships, whereas contemporary theft can dispense even with the victim’s presence. This difference does not absolve the old pickpocket, but it exposes a contradiction: in an economy in which money circulates in increasingly abstract ways, responsibility tends to become just as intangible. 

The film thus identifies an issue that goes beyond the transformation of payment systems. Money changes form, but it continues to organize human relationships. It determines who can survive, who can choose, who can afford to depend on someone else. Trust, too, becomes part of this economy: we rely on procedures, devices and verification systems, while it becomes increasingly difficult to know who is really on the other side. The traditional pickpocket, at least, has the advantage of being professionally recognizable. His client does not know they are one, but the relationship is concrete. 

Everything has a price, including what is not formally put up for sale. The difference is that today the market no longer needs to present itself as such: it is embedded in the tools we use to work, pay, communicate and organize our existence. The empty wallet then becomes an effective metaphor, without any need to lend it excessive solemnity. The container is still there; it is the contents that have changed address. And anyone who keeps looking for banknotes finds themselves out of the market. 

Harry, however, is not merely a remnant of an earlier economy. His private life introduces a contradiction more interesting than any nostalgia for the past. The man who now devotes almost all his time to Rosie, his seriously ill wife, who is unable to move independently, let alone interact with others, has not been an equally reliable husband and father at every stage of his life. The story gradually reveals his shortcomings, particularly in his relationship with his daughter, preventing the viewer from turning his present devotion into an easy absolution. 

This is a crucial detail: taking care of someone does not retroactively make all our actions better. There is no system of moral compensation in which every affectionate gesture generates credit that can be used to settle the debts of the past. Life, for better or worse, has no customer service department to contact in order to have one’s failures erased. 

And yet, in his relationship with Rosie, Harry shows a tenderness that needs no declaration. At one point, he starts dancing in front of her as she lies motionless in bed. The scene is poetic precisely because it does not try too hard to be so: a man moves in front of a woman who cannot join him in movement or even return his gaze, keeping a relationship alive that does not end with the possibility of receiving a response. It is a gesture that is both playful and melancholy, in which one can also read an attempt to come to terms with what Harry was unable to give his family. 

The film offers no guarantees as to the reparative power of this love. We do not know whether Harry’s devotion to Rosie is a form of atonement, a way of giving something back, or simply the choice he makes in the present. Its strength probably lies precisely in the impossibility of clearly separating these motives. Feelings, after all, are not always transparent either: sometimes we do something for someone else and, at the same time, for our own sake, so that we can continue to live with ourselves. 

It is in this ambivalence that Turturro builds an extraordinary character. His Harry retains the professionalism of someone who has learned to understand the world through precise gestures, but he also carries the awkwardness of someone who has not managed his own life quite as well. The actor avoids both the caricature of the old criminal and the sentimentality of the devoted husband. His performance brings together pride, pettiness, irony and tenderness, without asking the viewer to choose which Harry is the real one. They are all Harry, including the versions it would be more convenient to ignore. 

The film’s tone, too, moves between tragedy and comedy without turning one into a mere interlude in the other. The playful situations do not erase the protagonist’s precariousness, just as his vulnerability does not prevent the story from enjoying the contradictions of a man who has outlived his time. The music, with its jazz and noir overtones, sustains this balance and gives the city a vitality that has nothing to do with its modernization. New York keeps running; Harry keeps walking. 

While this film observes someone who has failed to update his trade, Ink tells the story of a system that turns reality into a product. The former shows the obsolescence of craftsmanship, the latter the evolution of the machine. 

From Murdoch to the pickpocket: technology changes, the commodity does not. And when theft becomes a system, it no longer even looks like a crime. 

The title already contains both a diagnosis and a joke. Harry is the last specimen of a professional category at risk of extinction, but not because society has finally defeated theft. On the contrary, theft has found far more profitable and less strenuous opportunities. The market has changed, not the propensity to take what belongs to others. Only those who do it with their hands have become obsolete. 

What remains is a man who has made mistakes, who cannot correct his past and who, in the present, takes care of the woman he loves and is willing to do anything for her. He is neither a hero to be rehabilitated nor a relic to be pitied. He is a contradictory individual, as are, after all, many of those who, without committing crimes, manage their responsibilities with considerable nonchalance. 

Noah Segan thus creates a film that uses pickpocketing to talk about money, technology and trustworthiness, but finds its most effective counterpoint in the protagonist’s private life. The world has made theft more sophisticated, and perhaps thieves more dishonest. And while economic value dematerializes, bodies still need caring for, relationships remain compromised, and there are accounts no bank can settle. 

Harry, at least, still knows where to put his hands. The problem is that the world has learned to steal without using them. 

The pickpocket is heading for extinction. Theft, on the other hand, has found an office job.