The Plot Against Harry

Here's something new: a little B/W film with no stars, about a middle-aged Jewish ex-gangster who wants to go into the catering business --AND it's not "Hollywood sit-com cute"! It's understandable that with all of that going 'against' it, no one wanted to release this film back in 1970. Luckily, director Martin Roemer never underestimated the richness of his film. Twenty years after being turned down by Hollywood, he decided to try the independent festival circuit and there, he found his audience.

The plot against Harry Plotnick is basically his own conscience and paranoia working against him. He'd left a good marriage unaware that his wife was pregnant at the time, not that it probably would have made a big difference to him back then. He was obsessed with the numbers racket, where he made a fair amount of money but ultimately spent a fair amount of time in prison, only to discover upon his release that the rackets had been taken over by various minorities. Now Harry is beginning to see the signs that it's time to make good with his conscience, with his family and with God. Not an easy feat!

This film is a wonderful glimpse into the kind of independent cinema that was around during the early seventies. It's 'early John Cassavetes meets early Woody Allen'. Unlike THE FRENCH CONNECTION or MEAN STREETS, both good films that depicted very specific worlds within Manhattan at that time, this film opens up a whole variety of worlds. Thus it steers free of cliches, no matter how deep it goes into the ethnic backgrounds of its characters. People are just people. Not all good or all bad. This film is like a breath of fresh air compared to the ultra-hip indie films of today. It's effortless, humorous, poignant, and an extremely enjoyable time capsule of the recent past.

The Plot Against Harry is an extraordinary, forgotten film that pops up from time to time in revival houses and late night television and is not to be missed. It's as if Scorcese did comedy - a great slice of criminal life and the true criminal mind - very reminiscent of today's "Sopranos" on HBO.

This movie is a gem. In plot, scripting, acting and direction, there is wit and verisimilitude. It's a favorite of mine that deserves to be more widely known.

The 'hero' is a small time numbers runner who returns home after a stretch in prison to find lots of changes on the 'job' and at home. His life becomes more and more complicated as he copes with his new life. There's a clever ending.

I give it 'only' 9 of 10 only because it's not 'a 100 best of all time' film. Still, it's one of my favorites. I saw it once on its release, and spent a lot of time tracking it down for a second view. The effort was worth it.

On September 19 I saw "The Plot Against Harry." It was projected using a 35mm film reel and the film was restored into 4K picture quality. The picture and sound quality were terrific, almost as if the film was made and released recently. I counted a total of eight people, including myself, in the auditorium. You could hear lots of laughs, the movie was pretty darn funny. Once it ended, I had to visit the bathroom, and two of the guys from my screening were also in there discussing the film. They compared it positively to "Uncut Gems" and "The Sopranos;" the movie was about a Jewish mobster, after all. I made "The Sopranos" connection personally while watching, but didn't identify "Uncut Gems," but it made sense once I heard it.

There weren't any special guests or Q&As regarding the film, even while being at an indie theater. The reason I think it was this way is because from my understanding this film has sort of become obscure in this day and age. Looking at the film on Letterboxd, it has just over a thousand viewers. For reference, the most seen movie on the website is Bong's 2019 film "Parasite" which is nearing three million total viewers. In comparison, it has a mere 408 viewers on IMDb. No single cast member from it has more than five film credits, and I personally never have heard of the director, Michael Roemer, or any of his films, although some of his other work seems compelling and I'd like to check it out. I think this is honestly the most interesting thing about the movie, how under the radar it seems for not just me, but pretty much wherever I can find it online. The biggest shout I can seem to find was that both Wes Anderson and Roger Ebert praised the film some time ago, however that's about where it ends. Despite it being very obscure and hard to find, I'd recommend anyone who gets a chance to check this one out.

The aspect that stuck out to me the most was the performances, namely the film's leading man, Martin Priest, who portrays the titular Harry Plotnick. As I said, nobody in the film seems to be a star, which perplexes me because Priest gives a terrific comedic performance, using deadpan delivery to his advantage, which made me and several other audience members laugh to ourselves on multiple occasions throughout the film's short, but sweet runtime. This isn't to say the other cast doesn't shine, the next best performance was Ben Lang as Leo, Harry's ex-brother-in-law. Leo was such a ditzy, lovable buffoon that Lang brought the perfect amount of chipperness to. After my viewing, I did read that the film had its premiere in 1971 but wasn't publicly screened until eighteen years later, so that could be a key factor of none of the cast being very famous, which is pretty unfortunate.

Personally, nothing much frustrated me or challenged me with the film. It was just a nice little film made to give its audience a good time, nothing too thought provoking came out of it, which isn't a bad thing. I'd like to watch it again sometime and maybe even find the rare DVD, the only listing of it on eBay right now is $75! It kind of concerns me that movies like this are still at risk of being hard to find for years to come even though it was released on DVD, because as physical media is becoming less and less popular, collectors like me get concerns that we could lose quality films if we don't have hard copies. I guess this is pretty frustrating but isn't really the fault of the movie itself, but rather the way studios and audiences have let films fade into rarity.

I Only heard of this recently - once again thanks to my favorite NYC theater, Film Forum - and I wish I had seen it years ago. The Plot Against Harry (the title itself seems like a kind of cruel joke that could have been played on Harry, or the name of a podcast about him, like who is the plotter or ployee) is a deadpan comedy that is not shot like a documentary but is peopled like it, and is packed full of incident and (in Yiddish speak) mishegas and tsuris (sic) for one man to deal with in 80 some odd minutes.

Thankfully, Michael Roemer, who I imagine took on a herculean feat with a low budget to direct so many regular people in big celebration after big gathering scene (location work that would make Lumet's head spin), and Priest is close to perfect at looking and behaving so dejectedly and miserable in scene after scene even as you can guess he has brought some of this on himself, you can't help but feel a little bad for him... until things just get more cruel and ironic. I mean, Harry's heart (mild spoiler, it's not the heart) is the least of his worries with his ex and his estranged kids and that one guy who was probably an extra in Goodfellas, etc.

Think like, I dunno, a less visually dazzling but no less biting East Coast late 60s Coen brothers - this is up there with the most relentlessly bittersweet (mostly bitter) Jewish films I've ever seen, and I mean that as a compliment. I'm sure the Safdies studied this like a conspiracy nut with the Zapruder footage, even if this is less anxious and more doomed in how the filmmaker treats its hapless anti-hero.