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Summary: Visually Stunning -- Rod Steiger's Finest Effort
Review: 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 standarts. 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 standarts, 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!*****
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Summary: Steiger Unforgetable !!
Review: Rod Steiger delivers a superb performance as Sol Nazerman who is haunted by events of the past and disturbed by the reality of the present. Brock Peters , Juano Hernandez and Geraldine Fitzgerald are in top form. but it is Steiger who brings us to the brink..especially ... in the final sequence which packs a wallop you will not soon forget.
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Summary: Steiger Lost To Kid Shaleen?!
Review: Rod Steiger's performance as Sol Nazerman, Holocaust survivor who resurfaces as a haunted Harlem pawnbroker is one of the landmark performances in fim history. You just marvel at how consummate a character study "The Pawnbroker" is. Steiger's character begins the film as a man who has deliberately disconnected himself from humanity, disinterestingly offering a pittance for the prize possessions of the poor souls who enter his grated fortress. If not for a chain of events that trigger deliberately repressed memories Nazerman would be content to remain in his self-imposed shell just waiting to die. What is remarkable is that Steiger does not deliver a showy performance, the changes in his person are very subtle. Credit also to director Sidney Lumet for making what is a difficult film to watch utterly compelling. Great black and white cinematography, snappy editing, and a moody score by Quincy Jones add to a required cinematic experience.
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Summary: Astounding performance
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Astounding performance
Review: 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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Summary: "I have escaped from emotions."
Review: The role of "The Pawnbroker"--Sol Nazerman is said to be the highlight of Rod Steiger's career. Middle-aged Sol Nazerman is emotionally dead, yet he still functions--after a fashion. He opens and closes his dingy pawnshop in a run-down section of New York, and he lives and helps support his sister-in-law's annoying family out in Long Island. Sol goes through the motions of being alive, but he doesn't feel anything, and he'd prefer not to remember anything. When the film begins, it is the 25th anniversary of Sol's wife's death in a concentration camp. Survivor's guilt plagues Sol, and the memories of those he loved bring only pain and suffering.
Several people try to 'reach' Sol--his eager young shop assistant, Jesus Ortiz, Sol's long-time lover, and a lonely widow who seeks charitable contributions. Sol rejects everyone, and it's clear that life and its bombardment of emotions is extremely painful. Amidst flashback sequences of his past, Sol delivers financial judgment on the pathetic articles dredged up by the local residents. Sol rejects pity, and sympathy, and instead doles out pawn tickets and dollar bills to his customers. The customers criticize his lack of humanity. They expect their stories of woe will somehow increase the payment Sol gives them, yet little do they realize that he has suffered far more than they could ever imagine.
Rod Steiger's performance is incredible. He is disconnected from all around him, but the past also acts as a live wire to the depths of his soul. A great deal of this film's power comes from Steiger's performance, but the film also masterfully imposes Sol's memories into his current life. This method of using flashbacks effectively emphasizes the unrelenting nightmare of his past. The film is dated in some aspects, but even these corny segments cannot detract from the film's overall power. "The Pawnbroker" is a must for all film buffs--displacedhuman
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Summary: Steiger in his best performance ever!
Review: The Steiger acting in this film is even better than his role in The heat of the night - 1967 - which deserved him an Academy Award .
The magnificent Lumet camera work and the meticulous script around a disturbed man whose mental wounds from the WW2 still makes him company .
Inmersed in his own world (or jail) he is a pawnbroker jew and lives in an isolated way . He has no friends and he experiences very often , the ancient and painful memories about the Nazi violence on his father and him as a child in the war .
The introverted character will carry him to a lot of unpredictable and challenging situations in which you will notice the mind hell in this ill man , with the unavoidable tragic consequences .
Superb movie.
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Summary: Rod Steiger's best work.
Review: 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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Summary: I Did Not Die......
Review: This devastating film about a holocaust survivor living (or rather existing) in Spanish Harlem NY, was an important, controversial and courageous exercise in 1965, and it retains its power all these years later. With what is without doubt Rod Steiger's finest performance, this study of a man haunted by his memories, and so traumatized by survivor's guilt and grief that he has numbed his emotions beyond human touch, and isolated himself completely from the humanity surrounding him, might even stun and disturb today's cynical sophisticates.
The only thing Sol Nazerman, the Pawnbroker, hasn't lost is his life. Everything he loved has been taken from him, and the wall he has erected to separate himself from his pain has likewise enured him to any human emotion, even pity and compassion for the human flotsam that daily appears before him with their pathetic possessions to pawn. He has no longer the ability to love, hate, desire or despair. He simply transacts, without care or consideration. Rod Steiger could be a bombastic and over-the-top actor, so his restrained, thoughtful, carefully modulated performance here is a revelation and an acting masterpiece.
Filmed with gritty realism on location in black and white (absolutely correct for this piece), it is a very adult, mature, and somber work. It was controversial in its time for nudity and because the gangster that uses Nazerman's pawnshop to launder money is black. That, and an unflinching look at the Spanish Harlem of junkies, prostitutes and so on. Today, all of this seems completely appropriate.
The supporting cast led by Jaime Sanchez as the assistant, Geraldine Fitzgerald as the kind and lonely social worker & Brock Peters as the malevolent entrepeneur, the ruthless gangster with a taste for refinement,are excellent. There are nice bits by Jauno Hernandez, Rene Santoni, and others as the Pawnbroker's customers.
Sidney Lumet provides his customary skill and precision in direction, not to mention bringing out Steiger's tremendous performance. The editing by Ralph Rosenblum intercuts Nazerman's terrible memories in flashback with his present surroundings brilliantly. Quincy Jones's score works nicely.
But the show is Steiger. His lesson to Sanchez on the "mercantile heritage" of the Jew is a classic scene. And the careful buildup to the shattering climax of the piece, as Nazerman becomes increasingly overwhelmed with the images of his lost family and the wreckage of his past that culminates in his crashing breakthrough into the present and the onslaught of his emotions will not be forgotten by anyone loving great acting and filmmaking.
This is not an easy film. It does not sell out its story cheaply to any kind of audience-friendly ending. This is modern tragedy, done with care and guts, and well worthwhile for those who treasure that.
Footnote: And they gave the Oscar to Lee Marvin for Cat Ballou. Nuff said.
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Summary: Poignant, impassioned film
Review: This is one of my favorite films. Rod Steiger, the most underrated artist alive, in my opinion, plays a Jewish pawnbroker who struggles with memories of the war, loss of his family and the apathetic shell his life has become. When he finally realizes that the people around him need his concern and without it, they can't survive, it's too late. A young Quincy Jones composed the tremendous Jazz score that gives every scene depth and punch. The film is in black and white which makes the characters seem more shady, sad and poignant. It is filmed on location in Hell's kitchen, at that time, a derelict New York neighborhood. This gives the film an atmosphere of desperation, fear, foreboding and regret. It is a sensitive, complex film that stirs the emotions on so many levels. See it if you can.
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