starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Jaime Sánchez
directed by Sidney Lumet
116 minutes
Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger), a survivor of the Holocaust who lost his wife and two children during World War 2, stumbles through life. He runs a pawn shop in East Harlem but is unable to make ends meet, leaving him indebted to Rodriguez (Brock Peters), the local mob boss. Jesus Ortiz (Jaime Sánchez), who works for Nazerman, tries to form a bond with his boss. Sol teaches him some of what he has learned but Sol has no interest in bonding with anyone. This includes Marilyn Birchfield (Geraldine Fitzgerald), a social worker who shows an interest in Sol that he is unable to reciprocate in any way.
Rod Steiger was nominated for an Academy Award for Best actor for his performance in The Pawnbroker but did not win the award. It was the only nomination for an Academy Award that the movie received.
The soundtrack was put together by Quincy Jones and was one of the highlights of the movie for me.
This movie is very much about Sol Nazerman’s inability to get over what happened to him during World War 2. Today we call it PTSD. There are numerous flashbacks which make it clear that he is still plagued by visions of what he saw and experienced during the war.
I was moved by moments in this movie but on the whole I wasn’t impressed by this movie. It’s possible that I would have been impressed if I had seen it much earlier in my life.
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