New York. Dave the "Dude" is a gangster who buys apples from homeless woman Apple Annie, because he thinks the fruit brings him good luck. He meets Queenie, who accepts to pay off her late father's debt by performing as a singer and dancer in Dave's night club. Dave also rejects a business offer by Darcey, a gangster who traveled to meet him. When Annie's daughter Louise announces that she is engaged to Carlos, whose father is aristocrat Alfonso Romero, and that they will arrive from Barcelona via ship to New York, Annie is in panic, since she never told her daughter that she is poor and homeless. Dave and his henchman Joy Boy thus stage a giant show to feign that Annie is a rich lady, and even hires hundreds of guests for a party. Carlos, Alfonso and Louise are impressed and return back to Barcelona. Dave and Queenie decide to get married as well.
The director Frank Capra's final film, "Pocketful of Miracles" is a remake of his own beloved comedy "Lady for a Day" from '33, yet the critics rightfully concluded that the Capra from the 30s was better than the Capra in 1961. Stiff and staged, "Pocketful" feels strangely out of touch with the time it was made, as if Capra deliberately tried to continue a form of style that was not that fresh anymore, yet it still has that spark of humanism that carries the story. Among the problems is that supporting actors Peter Falk as Joy Boy and Sheldon Leonard as gangster Darcey are delicious to watch, stealing every scene, but, unfortunately, the four main protagonists Dave the "Dude", Queenie, Apple Annie and Alfonso Romero are bland, nowhere as interesting as the former two, which speaks volumes about how underwritten they are. The main tangle in which the homeless Annie is supposed to be "disguised" as a rich lady for her upcoming daughter appears very late, halfway into the film, while too many unnecessary subplots introduced early on are irrelevant. A few comedy moments do ignite: in one, the Chicago gangster Darcey arrives lying on a bed in a traveling truck for a meeting with Dave, and complains: "For 48 hours I've been knocking around this chocolate cage all the way from Chicago! I'm seasick! Like being in solitary, only it moves." Falk's Joy Boy is also splendid in his cynical complaining. Upon hearing that he will have to round up all the reporters to keep the arrival of Alfonso Romero a secret, Dave and Joy Boy have this exchange: "What time does the ship get in?" - "...I hope it sinks!" In another sequence, when Carlos asks Dave to be the godfather of his first child, Joy Boy is so shocked, that instead of spitting out his drink — he actually bites off a piece of glass from it. Despite a too naive and "too safe" approach at time, "Pocketful of Mircales" is a worthy farewell to the director, and inspires to seek out his best early work.
Grade:++
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