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The Pawnbroker [Import]

Rod Steiger , Geraldine Fitzgerald , Sidney Lumet    Unrated   DVD
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
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Based on a novel by Edward Lewis Wallant, this gritty story follows Sol (Rod Steiger in a breakout performance), a lonely camp survivor who has dealt with the destruction of his family by suppressing all emotion and cleaving to the philosophy that nothing matters except money. (His bedridden and dying friend Mendel describes him, to his face, as "the walking dead.") Sol cannot accept the friendship of his assistant, Ortiz (Jaime Sanchez), or of an equally lonely widow (Geraldine Fitzgerald). As the 25th anniversary of his wife's murder approaches, he starts to fall apart, and it becomes clear that what he really wants is to die. The film was considered shocking when first released, both because of its rawness and because of brief nudity. Time has made some of the dramatic touches seem melodramatic--especially the corny "blood on my hands!" final scene. But Steiger's performance is still remarkable, and, even after MTV, the sudden-flashback editing is a forceful technique. A high point of Sidney Lumet's career. Black and white, with lots of atmospheric trumpets by Quincy Jones. --Richard Farr

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5.0 out of 5 stars Astounding performance Oct 15 2003
Format:DVD
Rod Steiger's performance in this film is the best of his career. Period. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, 1965, and should easily have won--although he did not. In this powerful film, he plays Sol Nazerman, a seedy denizen of New York's Lower East Side who makes his living as a pawnbroker. Into his store come lowlifes of all sorts--hookers, junkies, thieves. Nazerman is a survivor of the Holocaust and carries enormous psychic scars that refuse to stop tearing at his soul.

As a vicious menacing crime figure, Brock Peters is also superb--the present-day reminder to Nazerman of how evil never dies. Other cast members include Geraldine Fitzgerald as a sympathetic caseworker and Jaime Sanchez as Nazerman's young Latino assistant who is of another generation and another culture, and cannot understand his boss' terrible anguish.

Director Sidney Lumet has done an outstanding job here conveying the lifelong suffering that horrific evil brings with it. This is not a graphic film, but one that delivers its message before the days of special effects via pure drama. It is a great thing to have this now available on DVD; this is a film that should be seen by those who treasure phenomenal acting and powerful emotion.

Very highly recommended; the best American film of 1965 and one of the best American films of the 20th century.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Rod Steiger's best work. Jan 11 2004
By Donato
Format:DVD
This black & white art film from the Sixties holds up extremely well thanks to Rod Steiger's wonderful performance and Sidney Lumet's gritty direction. The film, not to mention the novel it was based upon, is one of my favorites because it captures graphically the way the main character's memories of the Holocaust hold him prisoner years later as a Harlem pawnbroker. With his life long ago drained of joy and feeling, he is at once the victim of his pawnshop and life, and the businessman who's lost the ability to empathize with his poor and victimized (but often amazingly hopeful) customers. Add to the drama an urban jazz score by Quincy Jones and you have a picture that belongs in any serious film lover's collection.
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5.0 out of 5 stars The Sounds of Silence July 2 2003
By Robert Morris HALL OF FAME TOP 10 REVIEWER
Format:VHS Tape
This is one of only a few films in which there are certain scenes which, for various reasons, I find almost unbearable to watch again. The others include the scene at the train station when Sophie must make her choice, the sequence of murders in In Cold Blood, the burning of the church in The Patriot, the multiple hangings in The Ox-Bow Incident, and the evisceration of William Wallace in Braveheart.

Brilliantly directed by Sidney Lumet, with equally brilliant cinematography by Boris Kaufman (both of whom should have at least been nominated for an Academy Award), this is among the first films to dramatize with high levels of seriousness and sensitivity the essential evil of the Holocaust. Sol Nazerman is the central character, played by Rod Steiger who was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor. Lee Marvin received that award for his role in Cat Ballou. (I thoroughly enjoyed Marvin's performance but still think Steiger deserved the award. To his credit, so did Marvin and said so.) Nazerman is a pawnbroker in New York City, having long ago lost (or so it seems) his ability to have an feelings for anyone else...or even for himself. His mind may be especially alert but his heart is numb.

In terms of plot, not much happens. Most of the the film focuses is on Nazerman's dysfunctional interactions with other people, notably with Marilyn Birchfield (played by Geraldine Fitzgerald) and Jose Ortiz (Jaime Sanchez) who works for Nazerman. What's Nazerman's problem? With meticulous care, Lumet gradually reveals the past from which he emerged but, in certain respects, from which he has not survived. His "problem" is that he has lost his will to live but not to exist.

Many of those who have seen the film will insist that, in the final scene, when Nazerman screams out in pain, the sound of that scream has haunted them ever since. In fact, there was no sound. Steiger later explained that his approach to that climactic moment in the film was inspired by Picasso's anti-war mural, Guernica, which portrays unprecedented atrocities committed on April 27th, 1937, against the civilian population of Guernica, a small Basque village in northern Spain. To Steiger's and Lumet's everlasting credit, Nazerman's silent scream allows the film to have the greatest possible subliminal impact on those privileged to experience it.

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