In the movie, Harry and his partner are tracking a guy with a similar description that is put over the radio. Harry sees a naked woman in the window, and some guys come to beat him up, thinking he is a peeping Tom.
His partner breaks up the fight, and Harry decides to let them go. But it felt like there was no point to that scene, and didn't add anything to the story.
Unless I a wrong?
I see it as Harry trying to do his job, and how he, as a professional, responds to the misundertanding of civilians who mistook him for a "peeping Tom." Obviously, Harry felt that any REAL peeping Tom would have deserved the same treatment as Harry was getting from the guys who came at him.
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It's an exploitation film;impure and simple.
shareIt adds to Eastwood's character, and shows that he thinks bad guys catching a beating is justice.
shareYou have to view this scene in light of the earlier one. In a previous scene, Harry is looking through binoculars at an attractive, nude hippie in a building across from where he and Chicao are staked out. He really has no reason to surveil this woman, but continues to look for sheerly voyeuristic reasons. he goes so far as to say to himself, "Well, Harry sometimes you just have to live a little." So in this scene he is a peeping tom, but there are no repercussions.
In the next scene where there is a bona fide belief that the Asian man carrying the case could be Scorpio, Harry is not peeping. He's genuinely surveilling the apartment because he hasn't yet witnessed that the voluptuous prostitute's john is not Scorpio. So when the local vagabonds in the alley think Harry is peeping on the local prostitute, they take the appropriate action. I think Harry felt he had it coming and therefore lets the bum off the hook for beating an officer because in the earlier scene he, in fact, was peeping with no consequences. He probably felt guilty about it and figured his punishment came in the form of letting those old bums beat him up in the alley.
I also was reminded of another 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange, when the elderly vagabonds exact their revenge on Alex (Malcom MacDowell) for beating one of the bums in the early scene of the film.