The Pawnbroker
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Movie Reviews of The Pawnbroker
Movie Review: The Pawnbroker
Summary: 5 Stars
Film: "The Pawnbroker starring Rod Steiger
I saw this film in the theater when it first came out in 1965, it is one of the most moving films I think I have ever seen, and Rod Steiger was fantastic in it (of course he was always a favorite of mine). I have been of late trying to locate the film as well as the book (which I never read). After reading and seeing two films based on experiences of the Holocust, Shindler's List and The Boy in Stripped Pajamas got me on my search again. As I said "THE PAWNBROKER" is a very heart wrenching story of the cruel nature of the "Nazi's".I applaud and give my deepest respect to those individuals who survived such cruelty. It also shows one to take a minute before we judge a persons manner or actions before we know what makes them the way they are.
DP
Movie Review: Steiger in his best performance ever!
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Movie Review: When actors took pride in their craft.
Summary: 5 Stars
Emotionally overpowering. Steiger at his best. There was something about these actors who served in WW II. Sol's four minute bit on what its like to be "one of you people" (a Jew) is one of the most compelling bits of acting in the history of cinema. Such compression! Not a superfluous word of dialogue in the entire bit. As close to perfection as possible. It doesn't get any better than this. Brock Peters and Jaime Sanchez (The Wild Bunch) are also superb. An absolute must. The only other performances that can touch Steiger in this one is Steiger himself in "The Heat of the Night", George C. Scott in "The Hospital" and Richard Burton in "Look Back In Anger." Like most things, older is better when it comes to great movies and actors.Movie Review: Rod Steiger's best work.
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Movie Review: The Pawnbroker
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the few films to deal head-on with the psychological havoc wreaked on survivors of the Nazi extermination camps, Lumet's "Pawnbroker" is a bleak, hard-hitting story about imprisonment, both literal and metaphorical. Steiger, in a virtuoso performance, portrays a man so scarred by his witnessing of atrocities that he's become a paragon of emotional cruelty, quietly stewing in his hate and pain. Lumet wrings tension from Sol's jarring, sudden flashbacks as well as the urban setting, drawing sharp parallels between New York City's ghetto milieu and the wartime camps. With a somber jazz score by Quincy Jones, "Pawnbroker" is a gritty tale of unlucky survival.