The Pawnbroker

The Pawnbroker is maybe the best of Sidney Lumet's New York based films. It tells the story of Sol Nazerman, former professor from Germany, Holocaust survivor, now making a living as a pawnbroker in Harlem. Rod Steiger got an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. If he had lost to Sir Laurence Olivier for Othello I might understand, but losing to Lee Marvin for Cat Ballou? All three are performances on different planes of acting. This is one of those films like Cyrano De Bergerac which rise and fall on the ability of the person performing the title character. With a minimum of dialog and a performance mostly of anguished expressions, Rod Steiger conveys the story of a man who's really seen the worst of what life has to offer and expects very little from humanity. And in Harlem no one rises among the dregs of society that usually come peddling the last of their dreams to him. This film was done in 1964 and that was also the year of the Harlem riots, sparked by an NYPD officer killing a black teenager. My guess is that Sol Nazerman's pawn shop, white owned that it was never saw a scrap of damage. That's because one of the reasons he stays in business is because of a little money laundering on the side for Harlem racketeer Brock Peters. Unfortunately Steiger's assistant Jaime Sanchez sees a huge amount of cash being deposited in the safe after office hours. He's an ambitious young man and not really deciding which side of the fence to fall on. It's more his indecision that leads to tragedy later on. The highlight of the film for me is Steiger's equivalent of a 'hath a Jew not eyes' speech when he explains to Sanchez just why the Jewish people have the 'mercantile heritage' as he puts it. Too often it's forgotten that in all the places for thousands of years where Jews couldn't own land, this was what was left to them. On a side note that's one of the reasons for the State of Israel developing its own collective agricultural institution, the Kibbutz. It was to get Jews deliberate in touch with the land, to grow things on it and develop an attachment to it. Some of the other cast members of note are Geraldine Fitzgerald as a neighborhood settlement house social worker who tries to penetrate Steiger's catatonic personality and a really wonderful bit by Reni Santoni as a junkie trying to pawn a radio and jonesing to beat the band. Still the film is Rod Steiger's show, one of the few times he carried a film by himself and he does it magnificently.

The 1960s were many things – liberated, innovative, revolutionary, hip, bold, racy… but they were seldom sensitive, much less mature. And yet, being a time of greater honesty of expression, they were also a period in which humanity could perhaps begin to deal frankly with the most harrowing events of the century. But was the new generation of filmmakers up to the job? In some ways, yes they were. I am using the term filmmakers in its broadest sense, meaning everyone who contributes to the making of a motion picture. Lead actor Rod Steiger delivers a performance of incredible weight. It could be thought of as easy, portraying Sol Nazerman's emotional flatness, but in fact what Steiger is doing is portraying suppressed emotions, and he does so with exceptional control. Even when his character is at his most blank, Steiger is still presenting him as feeling on some level. This is testament to the commitment and realism of the Strasberg generation. But much as I admire Steiger, I would have preferred to see a man who actually petitioned hard for the role but never got it – Groucho Marx. At 74 Marx may have been a little old (although Steiger is theoretically too young), but I think he would have brought a certain level of feeling to the part, drawing from his life experience and the fact that comedians often have a contradictory knack for poignant dignity. This is something that a thorough professional like Steiger could not have achieved. The source novel by Edward Lewis Wallant appears to be an occasionally intelligent, respectful and even moving exploration of the effects of colossal emotional trauma. However it distractingly deals too much with the politics of the New York underbelly, and if there is some attempt to parallel the horrors of the holocaust with the deprivation of Harlem, this is an insulting piece of reductionism. From here on it is one poor judgment after another. The direction of Sidney Lumet, typically inventive but still a little unsteady at this point, veers off the rails completely here, with some unpleasantly bizarre and showy techniques. For example, when Brock Peters shows off his stolen-goods lawnmower, we can tell he is an intimidating character and that this is a confrontational moment – so why labour the point by putting the camera on the floor? Artsy self-indulgence is bad enough at the best of times, but it is monumentally inappropriate for a picture like this. And this is not all. The rambling Quincy Jones score relates not at all to the tone of the material (you couldn't even really say it is the sound of Harlem), and is surely only there because all independent avant-garde productions of the sixties "had" to have a free jazz score. And then there are the supporting roles – Jaime Sanchez's hammy Hispanic act would be fine in, say, West Side Story, but it's not for a serious picture. It's all such a shame because bits of The Pawnbroker are quite startlingly deep. There are certain things however that if done at all need to be done just right. I do not doubt that The Pawnbroker was all conceived with best of intentions, but those 60s hipsters were simply not equipped for the task.

It's strange to say that this very grim movie is one of my all-time favorites. "The Pawnbroker" might make you suicidal in it's deep cynicism of the human condition, but I think there is a positive side to the film. The main character, a deeply-wounded Holocaust survivor, initial has no feelings for anyone or anything--he's just going through the motions of life. But by the end of the film he learns that people are not all bad--and maybe that's the most shocking revelation of them all! Certainly Rod Steiger's greatest role. Do see it.

I recently saw again a couple Lumet projects that I admired, so turned to this. I think there is something to be said for artists who invent and then convince everyone afterward that what they have just experienced is the way the world is put together. Some filmmakers do this consistently. Or they do it once, and then just live in the world they've created. Others are amazingly clever at some point, and equally banal at others. Polanski comes to mind. When this was new, it was groundbreaking, truly an achievement. It worked. Lumet's approach is actor-centric, not something I particularly value. But it is perfect for an exploration of a man: world growing from an individual. Lumet also likes to use space, but he doesn't know the containment properties of space, only the dividers, so we have the shop will all sorts of walls and fences. The lover's apartment as well. What was new was this was the first movie — mainstream US movie — to use nudity. Its underwhelming today thank heaven, but rather shocking in its day, especially because the woman is black, and a seller of sex. In the project, it triggers the most extended flashback sequence, one that involved our hero's deepest disaster. Overlapping flashbacks had been used, most famously in "Manchurian Candidate," which resembles this in some ways. But it hadn't been so fragmented, so apparently integrated into the fabric of the man. We see a desperate *; he sees his humiliated wife. We see street thugs beating up a drunk; he sees the holocaust. This cinematic device is now so common as to not be remarkable. Sex (in the form of exposed breasts) and Nazis both had more cinematic power then than now. Is it greater art if we digest it, even if the work itself becomes ordinary in the process? Seeing this will do to you what happens with the character we see. It will undress your memory, your cinematic memory. If you saw this when you were both young, it will give you a flashback, you living both now and then. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

A classic. One of the few if not only who portrays not the atrocity at the surface, but the trauma afterward. No evil SSers in their black uniforms of death. It might have been more entertaining and simple to understand. Instead the movie captures the evil in the victim. There are the walking dead. Those who survived. For them living was nothing but survival. The setting is NYC of the 60s. This movie will outlive most movies. It is a true classic in the psychological genre. The only minor flaw is the clownesque character of Jesus. Rod Steiger puts down an excelling performance as the character of the pawnbroker. A very esthetic filming in black and white.

In a poor neighborhood of New York, the bitter and lonely Jewish pawnbroker Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger) is a survivor from Auschwitz that has no emotions or feelings. Sol lost his dearest family and friends in the war and the faith on God and the belief in mankind. Now he only cares for money and is haunted by daydreams, actually flashbacks from the period of the concentration camp. Sol's assistant is the ambitious Latin Jesus Ortiz (Jaime Sanchez), a former urchin that has regenerated and now wants to learn with Sol how to run a business of his own. When Sol realizes that the obscure laundry business he has with the powerful gangster Rodriguez (Brock Peters) comes also from brothels, Sol recalls the fate of his beloved wife in the concentration camp and has a nervous breakdown. His attitude leads Jesus Ortiz to a tragedy and Sol finds a way to cry. "The Pawnbroker" is a powerful and realistic story of bitterness, loneliness and disbelief in mankind of a man victim of the Holocaust. Rod Steiger has certainly the best performance of his career in the complex role of a skeptical and bitter Jewish. His assistant is an ambiguous character that contrasts with the pawnbroker with his optimistic and happy behavior. In the end, the pawnbroker feels the need to cry and impales his hand with a spike, also in a reference of Jesus Christ. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): "O Homem do Prego" ("The Man of the Spike" - literally; however, it is a pun that also means "The Pawnbroker")

A concentration camp survivor lives a bitter and isolated existence as a Harlem pawnbroker. This is an extremely drab and depressing movie, which would be OK if it was rewarding in any way, but it's not. Lumet, who would follow up this disappointing effort with the brilliant "Fail Safe," is annoyingly indulgent and pretentious here. Everything about this movie screams that it's an important movie about a serious subject. Yes, the subject is serious, but the movie is a joke, with a pathetic, melodramatic finale. Steiger, never a subtle actor, is so hammy that it's painful to watch. In fact, with the exception of Fitzgerald, the acting is uniformly bad. The loud, obnoxious score adds to the misery.

A very impressive and dramatic movie. I remember when I saw the first time this movie as a young teenager, I was deeply impressed by it, and after many years it still one of the movie that are important to me. The thing that hit me in the movie is the wire between the violence in the streets of the city and the violence in the Nazist concentration camp. It's the story without any hope of a survivor, a dead man walking, living an impossible life in the violent modern society. It has been the first movie that I saw about other movies about the Holocaust and still Ithink it's one of the more impressive about this argument. I saw many movies about the Holocaust, ma no one treats as this, the difficult life of survivors who lost their family.

What a shame, because this was a movie I was looking forward to. The movie was just so slow and I didn't care about any of the characters. I didn't care if they lived or died. I've never really been a fan of Rod Steiger, although I am a fan of Sidney Lumet.

Although the supporting cast is uniformly excellent (Brock Peters especially so), they are really only believable props to what is, essentially, a one-man performance by Rod Steiger. And what a performance it is! Steiger grabs your emotions, and maintains a hold long after the final credits roll. He sucks all the oxygen out of the room, and you're not able to draw a deep breath until it's over. For some reason, this movie seems to have faded from public awareness, and isn't all that easy to find. I first saw it in 1965, and then again about 30 years later; it packed the same emotional wallop the second time around. Both Steiger and director Sidney Lumet have done plenty of excellent work since The Pawnbroker, but this remains the highwater mark for both. It is, unquestionably, one of the most powerful films ever made, and that's a might tough act to follow.