User Reviews

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 whore; 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.

This is in my 50 best movies of all time list.

Rod Steiger,a gifted actor, is at his very best here portraying Sol Nazerman, a pawnbroker who is completely shut down emotionally.

Through flashbacks, some fast, mostly slow, we see both the joy and subsequent horror of Sol's life in Nazi Germany, when his wife and children are swept into the camps and killed. Sol's deepest pain is that he survived and he carries it visibly. Nothing touches him. He is removed from humanity, living a life outside anyone else's.

This is never more exemplified than at his shop, where he is behind bars, often in shadow, while humanity moves outside, sometimes pleading with him, sometimes just wishing to make an emotional contact to no avail.

Brilliant black and white photography. Quincy Jones' music underscores this, it is jazzy 60s type of music, loud and vibrant, totally contrasting with the dark, dead world of Sol.

The supporting cast are terrific and the outdoor location shooting in New York is riveting. The movement of street life against the heaviness of Sol's plodding.

I still find it hard to believe that Rod lost the Oscar to Lee Marvin in the forgettable "Cat Ballou" (!!) that year.

This has to be seen by any serious lovers of movies. The last scene, done in one continuous take is heartbreaking, Sol finally getting in touch with the pain he has buried so deeply. Gut wrenching stuff. 9 out of 10.

Powerful drama centering around elderly NYC slum-area pawnbroker (Rod Steiger in Oscar nominated performance), tormented by his painful memories of Nazi concentration camp nightmare. Embittered, he brushes off all friendly people in his life, insisting that nothing matters and emotions are wasted.

Apparently "playing the system" for years, allowing king-pin thugs to use his store as a money laundering "front", while collecting his "cut", the no-nonsense pawnbroker is suddenly plagued by flashbacks, showing how his young wife and son are killed, and at once wanting to stop the evil workings of his hoodloom infested slum neighborhood. When the young "apprentice" he hired lays his own life on the line to protect him from being shot during a robbery, the pawnbroker shows his first human emotions since the horrific day he lost his family.

The flawless direction, masterful black & white cinematography, haunting Jazz score, along with innovative handling of the themes (racism, prostitution, social reforms, etc.), make this nothing less than a masterpiece. There is a sequence with prolonged nudity, considered daring during the "Hayes Code" years, even if it appears tame by today's standards. The scenes are not gratuitous, but essential to the plot. Still these scenes may make this film unsuitable for pre-teens.

Like Shindler's List, this is a film many may find painful to watch. By 1965 standards, the mere attempt of giving insight into the evils of the Holocaust was a strong move. The resulting product withstood the test of time and will endure. Named as his personal favorite work, "The Pawnbroker" gives us Rod Steiger's finest performance! Highly recommended.

"The Pawnbroker" (1964): Directed by Sidney Lumet, scored by Quincy Jones, and starring Rod Steiger. This is one of the most powerful character studies in all of film history. It's up there with "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Taxi Driver". Shot in some of the most beautiful, gritty, black and white photography, set in Harlem, often using the real environment and passersby, this work has the feel of anti-Hollywood, which is completely appropriate for the story of a Jew tortured by the memories of the Holocaust, and the environment of pawn brokering. There's not a single moment of comedy, and many moments that feel like Diane Arbus could be seen lingering nearby. Steiger's ability to express withheld expression – anger and pain trying to burst from his impenetrable shell - is awe inspiring. When I first saw this film in the 60's, I knew I wanted to see everything this man did.

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.

Harlem pawnbroker Sol Nazerman wants to be left alone. A death camp survivor whose wife and children did not get out he has withdrawn from the world as much as possible in order to cope. The down and out people that frequent his shop get little more than his standard offer. There is no small talk, haggling or eye contact. Take it or leave it. Jesus, his ambitious assistant is treated with the same attitude except when Sol decides to impart some brutal life lessons on what it is to be a "merchant." Grim as his existence is Nazerman seems content to let his life slip away without the pain of feeling anything. This all changes when it's revealed he's running a front for a Harlem crime boss to launder cash. Forced to confront his involvement in criminal activity and constantly reminded of his concentration camp past Nazerman descends even deeper into his own private hell.

From start to finish The Pawnbroker is one tragic journey. Save for the optimistic Jesus the film is populated with characters in various forms of desperation. Rod Stieger as Nazerman is at times almost too painful to watch as he slips in and out of catatonia between the callous and cold diatribes he serves up to those attempting to reach out to him. Jaime Sanchez as Jesus is a bit too strident and Geraldine Fitzgerald's out of her depth social worker too clueless but Brock Peter's stylish thug is a potent dose of reality and highly effective.

Director Sidney Lumet's direction lapses into heavy handedness (slo mo, overlong flashbacks) on occasion bogging the film down while at other times "nouvelle vague" technique produces some powerfully edited scenes. Boris Kauffman's smoky cinematography successfully establishes mood and place stealing shots on Harlem streets and imprisoning Nazerman within the maze of cages in his shop and Quincy Jones quirky score partners nicely with the action and setting.

The Pawnbroker can be a difficult film to get through since the suffering remains unrelenting and Lumet's pacing is erratic most of the way but Stieger's towering performance makes it well worth the ordeal.

Rod Steiger gives the greatest lead-actor performance I have ever seen in the title role of the Pawnbroker. Lumet's direction strikes no false note and neither does the incredibly well-researched and painfully honest script. It's hard to believe how virtually forgotten this true masterpiece of a survivor's private hell. It shows very vividly that even those of us lucky enough to survive the camps need to be ever more rare of spirit to survive without significant trauma scars. Steiger extracts every piece of emotion from his character with a performance that exceeds all that came before it and has never been surpassed. Every aspiring actor needs to view Steiger's performance to realize how magnificent it truly is.

The Pawnbroker is a very disturbing film. The title character, Sol Nazerman,

played by Rod Steiger, is an aging Holocaust concentration camp survivor

running a pawnshop in New York. A young hispanic man who works in the

pawnshop looks up to Steiger's character, hoping to learn from the older man's years of experience and expertise in both financial and other business matters.

Steiger's character is emotionally closed throughout the entire length of the film. Jarrring flashbacks to the time when Nazerman was happy with his wife and two small children become increasingly menacing and tragic as the Nazi

domination and cruelty become more dominant. Steiger's character survives his family. The guilt attached to that survival haunts Nazerman as he numbly

proceeds throughout the present-day portions of the film.

This movie takes a huge risk even in it's premise because the title character is never really likable. You certainly have empathy for what Nazerman has

experienced in his life, but the harsh and dismissive way in which he treats both people close to him and the tragic figures who frequent his pawnshop leave you little choice but to have mixed feelings about this man.

Rod Steiger is excellent. It's incredible to think that less than three years later after playing this character, an elderly Jewish concentration camp survivor,

Steiger won an Oscar for his portraying southern bigoted police chief Bill

Gillespie in Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night.

Sidney Lumet's direction is excellent. The photography is a starkly shot black and white with a grainy almost documentary-type feel to it. The score by Quincy Jones is somewhat uneven, with inappropriate upbeat instrumentation intruding in to somber scenes.

All in all, a very good film, but definitely excruciatingly somber in tone.

This has to be the most depressing film I have ever seen. I seriously stopped in the middle because I was getting so bummed out.

Rod Steiger as Sol Nazerman, the pawnbroker of the title is brilliant in the role. I doubt if there is anyone else who could have brought froth the depths of despair that Nazerman was experiencing. He lost everything, not just a family, but his who reason for living, and, as he says, there was nothing he could do about it. He was utterly helpless as his world crumbled.

He was a man without compassion or felling. His only comfort was money, and that really did him no good. It did not help him when he was reliving the flashbacks from the Holocaust. All he wanted to do was die, but apparently did not have the will to do it himself, so he set himself up for killing.

Steiger wasn't the only person that made this film worth watching. There was Brock Peters as a gangster, Thelma Oliver as the girlfriend of his assistant (Jaime Sánchez), and Sánchez himself.

The gritty and dark setting was perfect for the film. Sidney Lumet was excellent as the director.

Oooph, this movie hurts.

Film buffs can find evidence of schizophrenia in any movie decade, but perhaps none more so than in the 1950s and 1960s. It is nearly inconceivable to me that "The Pawnbroker" came out in the year that "The Sound of Music" won the Best Picture Academy Award. Don't get me wrong, I very much like "The Sound of Music" too, but it almost seems like it was made in a different century compared to this film.

Rod Steiger was justly nominated for and wrongly lost the Academy Award for his performance in "The Pawnbroker," as a concentration camp survivor who has lost all faith in humanity and sees people as no more or less valuable than the possessions they come to him to pawn. The film was directed by Sidney Lumet, and it creates the same sweaty, grimy atmosphere that Lumet would occasionally revisit (like in his 1975 film "Dog Day Afternoon") and that Martin Scorsese made a career of throughout the 1970s. It's a bleak film, one that uses the horrors of the Holocaust to shape its main character's psyche without giving him or the audience any real hope for his future. It's a film that suggests that the Holocaust broke something fundamental in human nature that will never be repaired. It's a message at odds with so many films that try to find closure or hope or at the very least a lesson to be learned from such a dark chapter of history, and it makes "The Pawnbroker" feel years ahead of its time.

The film is also trailblazing in its acknowledgement of blacks and homosexuals at a time when the former were the subject of mostly preachy white guilt movies that starred Sidney Poitier and the latter were not to be found in films pretty much anywhere. In "The Pawnbroker," both exist without commentary; they're just part of the world Rod Steiger's character lives in, as disenfranchised from the rest of humanity in their own way as he is. It's rather remarkable that the film includes so many black and gay characters without the film being ABOUT black and gay characters. The casual inclusion of them is a greater statement for the time than a movie about them would have been.

This is by no means a pleasant film to watch, but it is an awfully good one, and one that may very well leave you shaken.

Grade: A

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.

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.

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.

A powerful but grim movie about a Harlem pawnbroker terrorized by memories of the Nazi death camps, this is an excellent drama enhanced by a brilliant cast, on-location shooting in New York and at the end, a surprisingly strong note of compassion.

As the movie opens, we see Rod Steiger unwinding on a lawn chair in post-war Long Island, with its tidy homes and lawns. His sister in law tries to talk him into a trip to Europe but the morose Steiger has no use for a trip that would only remind him of the stench of death. He has flashbacks to the horrors he endured. These scenes continue to mar his life as we see men and women being brutalized and witness their barbed wired surroundings as prisoners of Nazi Germany.

Steiger, as the death camp survivor, delivers a superb performance as the man haunted by the memories of his wife and children whose lives were cut short while he was spared, only to live with the bitterness that made his own life so sad.

The customers at his pawn shop in Harlem get the cold, calculating treatment from this broken man as they try to cope with their own meagre means of subsistence. Geraldine Fitzgerald plays the role of a social worker who tries to befriend him and meets with the same cold shoulder. I have seen this actress in other movies but was never so impressed with her, as in this movie. Towards the end, Steiger turns to her for company and understanding, as he deals with the thugs he allows to use his shop for their own nefarious deeds in exchange for money.

A young Puerto Rican assistant tries to learn the trade from his boss. Steiger takes the time to coach him and seems to get some satisfaction from this relationship. Only much later does he realize how much the assistant cared for him. The customers are mild, gentle people trying to eke out whatever they can get from this hard, bitter man.

The film-making conveys great realism. We see Steiger walk through Times Square with the marquee for Leslie Caron in the L-Shaped Room, one of the movies of the time. We hear the rumble of the elevated train as it makes its way through the neighborhood. The character actors in supporting roles are excellent and add to the overall impact of this drama.

This movie is not about the Holocaust as such, but the viewer can see the impact of the horrors on one man and how it affected his life and those around him. The emotional trauma did not allow him to respond to the acts of kindness that he received. Finally, he had to deal with one heroic deed that was completely unexpected. How he carried on, we cannot know but we can see that his world did not completely reject him, although he tried to reject it. We can understand that he is a victim of a great atrocity.

This movie was directed by the recently-deceased Sidney Lumet, who even Martin Scorsese said was the quintessential New York director. This movie takes a universal theme and gives it a great backdrop. This is one of the finest, realist films I have ever seen. A highly personal encounter with a great tragedy.

The first time I heard of "The Pawnbroker" was when it was mentioned in a great documentary called "Hollywood and the Holocaust", showing how Hollywood dealt with theme of the Jewish holocaust in the 2nd World War, and one of the most important films about the period is this film directed by Sidney Lumet. The testimonies of personalities (including lead actor Rod Steiger) was very captivating and something urged me to watch it right away. Here's a psychological and moving drama about a Holocaust survivor whose life haven't changed for best, instead, he remembers the ghosts from the past in a chaotic and criminal New York that resonates part of his tragic life in a concentration camp during the war.

In a magnificent and heart-breaking performance, Rod Steiger plays Sol Nazerman, a Jewish pawnbroker who lost his belief in mankind after losing his whole family in a concentration camp and seeing the horrors of war. The only thing he beliefs is in money because that's the only thing that lasts and the only thing that makes the world and people go round, he says that to the young and ambitious Jesus (Jaime Sanchez), who works for him in his pawnshop trading a little sum of money for people who wants to exchange old things for the money, and they'll always think that he can give more cash to them than the very few he gives to them.

Sol is a solitary, bitter and rigid man who pushes people away from his life, he doesn't need people's sympathy, it doesn't help people feel sorry for him. Geraldine Fitzgerald plays a friendly woman interested in this man's life after trying to make him interested in helping a community center of the city. He's not interested in her or in anyone; he only lives for the money waiting for death to come and put him out of his misery, he can't kill himself, and he keeps tormented with his past that seems to be happening again in the crowded and violent streets of New York. Through amazing and brief flashbacks we follow Sol and his horrific experiences during war, along with a similar situation during his recent life that evokes that, for instance, when he sees a black man getting attacked by a group of people, he stops, watches the scene and right away he remembers a man trying to escape through a fence in the camp, then being shot by a Nazi officer. And he keeps remembering, suffering, and not dying, always keeping his pain to himself.

The movie doesn't keep always on Sol, it also follows Jesus, the happy man who works for Sol, learning valuable life lessons of how to take care of the shop, and the importance of money in everyone's lives. These two opposite forces have some clashes, little arguments but they seem to go well with each other without realizing what bothers one another. Oscar wants to be successful as Sol, but he's too confident and positive on the same things that are twisted and miserable to Sol, he's too innocent about the world's hardness, barely realizing that he'll be connected with a group of thieves that wants to steal Sol's money, and he might be the one who'll help them with the plan.

Steiger makes of Sol a contradictory character in who we want to feel sorry for his loss and his tragic life but at the same time, he's not that likable, he's brute and introspective at times, mumbling a few words, and he can't make a person feel completely bad about himself, or herself, not caring about their problems at all. Yet, you feel that he has been through a lot of things, and it is too difficult not to relate with him. He makes us remember of ourselves, in times we are desperately just like him and we want to throw everything away, give up on things, and other times we might believe that death is the only answer. In the case of Sol, he should be more thankful for the life he has, and try to do and be more than just suffer; he has a family (in another state where he spends his vacations) that likes him, he has support from people and want to talk to him about anything. Will he be able to forget his past and live a better life? Maybe, maybe not but until then life repeat itself and Sol can only aspire to die or get killed.

"The Pawnbroker" has not only great performances and a terrific screenplay but many great things too, like the dramatic music of Quincy Jones, using a little bit of jazz; and a meaningful art direction, not only during the war, but also (and especially) the pawnshop of Sol, with lots of grids, a resemblance with the concentration camps that it's almost impossible to see a thing. It's the new prison of Sol and he doesn't realize that, if earlier he lived to see only misery and death, now we can only see the money. The only thing that is equal between both is that he can only see people behind these grids and barbed wires, the dramatic and sad division of human being.

It is a sad story that has one small happy moment right in the first scene after this, you must be very spirituous to watch this film. But I urge you to watch it, because it is one of the rare films on the subject made in the 1960's and to at least see how great Rod Steiger is, with his ability to play a psychological character that is not that easy to comprehend, a difficult role and Steiger's favorite of all of this roles (sadly he was robbed at the Oscars). It's a powerful, memorable and relevant work and one of the best directed by Sidney Lumet.

Rod Steiger doesn't so much give a great actor's performance in "The Pawnbroker" as much as he presents a seminar on film about great acting. He spits out his lines, contorts his face and becomes mired in bitter, embattled rage. We get few other dimensions from Steiger and, even at the picture's close, I felt little about his character's progression because the actor himself is still teaching class. As a Concentration Camp survivor immigrated to New York City, Steiger cannot do anything simple: his pain is grandiose, unsubtle. As for the plot, everything is spelled out for us to read, and director Sidney Lumet refuses to let the audience do any additional work. The look of the picture is edgy (pushing the boundaries of cinema in '64 with a gritty scenario), but the rest is flattened out, made too easy. The flashbacks are well-done (especially a haunting shot involving rings on the prisoners' fingers), but Quincy Jones' music is too jazzy (particularly at the end) and the dialogue, courtesy screenwriters Morton Fine and David Friedkin, is too direct and forceful. Eventually, the film is simply off-putting. ** from ****

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.

This awesome film is driven by a powerhouse performance by Steiger as a victim of his past reminiscences with the Holocaust. How Lee Marvin won that 1965 Oscar from Steiger is an ongoing mystery to me! Lumet's direction of the camera is brilliant. Everything fits together perfectly. The lighting, color and music are all blended to create an eerie world for us.