The Pawnbroker [Blu-ray]

Overview

"The Pawnbroker" is the dark exploration into the soul of a man who is tortured by the unbearable pain of his past. In order to most effectively reveal his character, rather than relying on a traditional plot sequence, the film carefully extracts the events of a few days in the life of Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger). A man who survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps but lost his wife and children, Nazerman is now alone, cold, embittered, and completely without faith in God or humanity. With indifference, he operates a pawnshop in New York's Spanish Harlem as a front for Rodriguez (Brock Peters), a black pimp and slumlord. Despite the continued efforts of his assistant, Jesus Ortiz (Jaime Sanchez), and a determined social worker, Marilyn Birchfield (Geraldine Fitzgerald), to break through his impenetrable walls, Nazerman remains detached and emotionless. This total noninvolvement extends to his loveless affair with Tessie (Marketa Kimbrell), a woman who lost her husband in the camps and whose father, Mendel (Baruch Lumet) disapproves of their current relationship. Flashbacks triggered by current daily events provide more detail of Nazerman's past, some which are so quick and disturbing as to be borderline subliminal. The most explicit flashback occurs when Ortiz's girlfriend, a black prostitute (Thelma Oliver) enters the shop to pawn a gold locket and bare her breasts to him hoping to increase his offered price. For Nazerman this causes pain, as it only reminds him of being forced to watch his wife raped by Nazi officers. Ortiz, the young, exuberant, lovable Puerto Rican assistant, continues to wear away at Nazerman's defenses, seeking some kind of emotional response. When Nazerman snaps back in thoughtless cruelty, Ortiz retaliates by arranging a robbery of the pawn shop. Nazerman's refusal to submit to the robbers results in gunfire, with Ortiz selflessly taking the bullet meant for his employer. His dying breath in the arms of Nazerman is at last the only thing the young man has done which breaks the stone barrier around the older man's heart, and evokes an expression of tenderness. Filmed in stark black-and-white,"The Pawnbroker" is a harshly realistic vision. Steiger's portrayal of an insensitive miser was pegged as anti-Semitic, civil rights organizations objected to Peter's totally unscrupulous character, and the Legion of Decency condemned the film based on Oliver's partial nudity scene. Nonetheless, the film received recognition from numerous critics' groups and Steiger, in what was his first starring role, picked up "Best Actor" honors from both the Berlin International Film Festival and the British Academy Awards.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/22/2014
UPC:	0887090076401
Original Release:	1964
Rating:	NR
Source:	Olive
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Language:	English
Time:	1:56:00
Sales rank:	14,330

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Rod Steiger	Sol Nazerman
Geraldine Fitzgerald	Marilyn Birchfield
Jaime Sanchez	Jesus Ortiz
Brock Peters	Rodriguez
Thelma Oliver	Ortiz's Girl
Marketa Kimbrell	Tessie
Baruch Lumet	Mendel
Juano Hernandez	Mr. Smith
Linda Geiser	Ruth
Nancy R. Pollack	Bertha
Raymond St. Jacques	Tangee
John McCurry	Buck
Charles Dierkop	Robinson
Eusebia Cosme	Mrs. Ortiz
Warren Finnerty	Savarese
Jack Ader	Morton
E.M. Margolese	Papa
Marianne Kanter	Joan
Ed Morehouse	Robinson
Marc Alexander	Rubin
Nancy Pollock	Bertha
Reni Santoni	Actor
Quincy Jones	Composer

Technical Credits

David Friedkin

Morton Fine

Morton S. Fine

Sidney Lumet	Director
Philip Langner	Producer
Roger Lewis	Producer
Worthington Miner	Executive Producer
David Friedkin	Screenwriter
Morton Fine	Screenwriter
Ely Landau	Producer
Morton S. Fine	Screenwriter
Dennis L. Maitland	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

The Pawnbroker is a powerful, moody film notable for a great performance by Rod Steiger in the title role and taut direction by Sidney Lumet. Lumet knows his way around New York, and his use of French New Wave techniques gives the film a vibrancy and urgency that complement the story. As Sol Nazerman, Steiger controls the showboating tendencies that have submarined some of his other performances, allowing his character's tortured past to seep quietly rather than boil noisily into his present-day life. Steiger's Nazerman is a cool, distant man slowly drawn back to his past by the challenges of life in contemporary New York. This was one of the first Hollywood films to dramatize the psychological impact of the Nazi concentration camps, while daringly drawing parallels to contemporary conditions of New York City ghetto life. The black-and-white cinematography by Boris Kaufman effectively enhances the somber mood, while the music and eerie lighting offer appropriate emotional punctuation marks for an intense and intelligent study of one man's emotional alienation. Rod Steiger received the film's only Academy Award nomination, though he lost to Lee Marvin's comic turn in Cat Ballou.