The_Film_Cricket The Pawnbroker stands as an example of Rod Steiger's best work on film. He plays Sol Nazerman, a holocaust survivor who now works in a pawnshop in Harlem where he pushes himself through his daily routine and seems completely devoid of all color and life and personality. As the movie opens we see a younger, happier man who was a professor in Germany with a beautiful wife who loved him and children who adored him. But it isn't long before the Nazi death machine comes steamrolling in and takes his family away. We see very little of Sol's experiences in the camps, only fleeting glances, flashes of memory and suggestions of what he has experienced.We meet him years later working in his Harlem pawnshop, offering a cold and impersonal manner as customers bring in their trinkets to pawn, "Two dollars" he says to nearly everyone without making eye contact. He has no interest in other human beings, no interest in those who are lonely and come by his shop to pawn their goods or just for a friendly chat. His stature is of a man drained of all humanity, drained of all personality. His hair is white, his skin is pale and his approach to his fellow man comes in the form of cold, impersonal detachment. He is a living ghost, drained of, all the things that make life worth living. When the movie is over, we understand very little about his experience except that we have only scratched the surface of the horror he has experienced.This is one of the best films ever made about the connective power of memory. There are moments when Sol will see something and a flash of a memory will occur. He sees a man being beaten by a fence and he remembers a fellow prisoner in the camp who was killed when trying to escape. A woman attempts to pawn her wedding ring and he remembers the women of the camp with their hands up as the camp commandant takes their rings. A prostitute comes by and strips down in order to offer him sex and he remembers horribly what became of his wife. As he walks home, we see an incredible series of images that are similar to the camps, the fences, stacks of shoes in a store front, all daily reminders of his past as he keeps his eyes to the ground.Sol's only remaining relative is his sister Bertha (Nancy Pollock). She is married to a man who detests her Jewish son but loves her American daughter. At the same time, he cares for Tessie, the widow of his best friend and her father Mendel who is on his deathbed. All of these people are supported by the money from the pawnshop. Distancing himself from the world is not as easy as he had hoped. The people who come in and out of his pawnshop are of little significance to Sol, but he deals with them, sometimes absently, sometimes with a buried frustration. He deals with old people who are lonely and looking for someone their own age to chat with. He deals with a junkie who comes in twitching and nervous as he tries to pawn a radio. He deals with charity cases who come by asking for donations. He cannot escape being a victim, as he deals with a street gang led by a slick huckster who brings items that are most likely stolen. Plus he is the victim of the local mobster (Brock Peters) who uses his place as a front. But out of this cold indifference, there are those who try to pierce his unfeeling skin.First is Jesus (Jaime Sánchez), a Latino street kid who promises his mother that he is finished with his life of petty crime and finds Sol through a newspaper ad. His demeanor likely represents the joy, rapture and optimism that Sol once exhibited. He is young, exuberant and sees a future as an entrepreneur. He becomes an eager student of Nazerman, wanting to learn from his elder but finding that the old man has no interest in him or his desire to learn. Asking the old man about his beliefs, he receives a cold and indifferent answer: "Money." The other soul who tries to reach him is the sweet Marilyn Birchfield (Geraldine Fitzgerald) who commits the sin of asking him to lunch. This turns out to be the humanitarian gesture that he cannot refuse, though he doesn't go with good graces. In the park, she talks to him and attempts to break through his cold indifference but he isn't interested in her care.What Sol represents, I think, are the years of pent up rage, brought on by the years spent in the concentration camp enduring the inability to deal emotionally with what happened. He chooses to dehumanize himself so that the pain won't consume him. He is wracked with guilt that he survived while millions perished, including those closest to him. He maintains his life, spending eight hours a day in his shop behind a cage, spaced away from the world that constantly intrudes upon him. There is an extraordinary moment when he receives a phone call that Mendel has died and he coldly informs Tessie, "Bury him, when someone dies you bury them." Contrast that with another death that occurs at the film's end, one that breaks Sol's cold demeanor. He blames himself, not just for this but for so much blood on his hands. This is where we arrive at Steiger's famous "Silent Scream" in which he wants to cry out but cannot. There's something dead in Sol that will never be revived. I am so glad the movie doesn't end with a conventional happy ending, it ends on a note that reminds us that his pain will go on but just for a moment because the emotional confinement has been broken.

mike dewey Might be Rod Steiger's most morose and bleakest role. As an Auschwitz survivor whose family were raped and tortured there, he feels a veritable menagerie of despair because of the guilt he feels for his inability to extricate them from the camp and for the guilt he feels because he somehow managed to make it out. His job as the titled pawnbroker does nothing but fuel more fire to his dire situation in life as he is cast among the severest cases of poverty in his store's Harlem neighborhood. Added to that, he has to front his store for a despicable vice lord (Brock Peters) so that he can at least make a modicum of income.Sounds and is grim but is, to me, the quintessential ground breaker of the ultra-realistic urban life dramas that were to unfold in the latter 60's and early 70's. Rod plays his part to perfection as a lifeless, embittered old man who has seen too much in one lifetime. The aforementioned Brock Peters along with Ray St. Jacques, Jaime Sanchez (his apprentice) and others flavor this dramatic pot even more so with their poignant portrayals of their respective characters, each of whom has fallen victim to the scourges of his ghetto habitat.I shall not offer up where and how the redemptive transformation occurs in our principal, except to say watch the entire movie and see for yourself how it all unfolds. Truly, a time-tested masterpiece!

Ben Larson This has to be the most depressing film I have ever seen. I seriously stopped in the middle because I was getting so bummed out.Rod Steiger as Sol Nazerman, the pawnbroker of the title is brilliant in the role. I doubt if there is anyone else who could have brought froth the depths of despair that Nazerman was experiencing. He lost everything, not just a family, but his who reason for living, and, as he says, there was nothing he could do about it. He was utterly helpless as his world crumbled.He was a man without compassion or felling. His only comfort was money, and that really did him no good. It did not help him when he was reliving the flashbacks from the Holocaust. All he wanted to do was die, but apparently did not have the will to do it himself, so he set himself up for killing.Steiger wasn't the only person that made this film worth watching. There was Brock Peters as a gangster, Thelma Oliver as the girlfriend of his assistant (Jaime Sánchez), and Sánchez himself.The gritty and dark setting was perfect for the film. Sidney Lumet was excellent as the director.

kenjha A concentration camp survivor lives a bitter and isolated existence as a Harlem pawnbroker. This is an extremely drab and depressing movie, which would be OK if it was rewarding in any way, but it's not. Lumet, who would follow up this disappointing effort with the brilliant "Fail Safe," is annoyingly indulgent and pretentious here. Everything about this movie screams that it's an important movie about a serious subject. Yes, the subject is serious, but the movie is a joke, with a pathetic, melodramatic finale. Steiger, never a subtle actor, is so hammy that it's painful to watch. In fact, with the exception of Fitzgerald, the acting is uniformly bad. The loud, obnoxious score adds to the misery.