Le prêteur sur gages

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.