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+--- Thread: Great old Movie -- The Pawnbroker (/thread-1627.html)
Great old Movie -- The Pawnbroker - ShadowLord - 04-25-2006
I was up late the other night -- and doing the old channel surf routine. As usual I stopped when I came to this black and white film and started watching it..
Very interesting and dark film. It actually made me think this was the type of movie RJ would watch. Anyways the film was called "The Pawnbroker" and dealt with the a number of social issues however to watch the main character's life pass and his flashback memories to his days in a Nazi concentration camp was really well done.
I did a quick check to read up on this movie and it came as no surpise that many said it was Rod Steiger best film.
I found a quick outline of the film at
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059575/
One viewer wrote a nice summary as follows
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"Rod Steiger considered this his best performance and he might be right. He is, for him, subdued for most of the film, although towards the end he punctuates his performance with silent screams. He's pretty good as the survivor of Auschwitz, consumed by survivor guilt, and denying himself any pleasures except the money taken in his pawn shop.
Various figures come and go in his life, although he shows no particular interest in any of them, and aversion towards many. The characters are rather sketchily done, as they might be in a play. There is the ambitious assistant, the whore, the gangster, the lonely man who wants to talk about Herbert Spencer, Reni Santoni as a quivering junkie, the pregnant young girl who wants to sell her engagement ring. (Not a wedding ring, mind you, this is an illegitimate pregnancy and in 1964 you were still in trouble if you had no husband and no opportunity for an abortion.) "That diamond is glass," he tells the stricken girl brusquely. Steiger's Sol Nazerman is a pretty cold fish.
His relationship with his Latino assistant is key to Steiger's evolution. Steiger "teaches" him that nothing matters but money, so Ortiz very sensibly decides to help the local gangsters hold up Nazerman's shop. But the assistant, instead, teaches Nazerman something. Killed in the robbery, he teaches Nazerman to feel pain, which Nazerman then reaffirms by impaling his palm on one of those spikey receipt holders, a kind of stigma to go along with his concentration camp tattoos.
The movie was pretty much a shocker on its release. Partly because the audience got to see some naked breasts. Amusing now, isn't it? It was also knocked because of the way Latinos and blacks were treated. I don't know why. It would be surprising if the owner of a pawn shop on 116th street didn't have a lot of customers who were people of color -- good and bad.
The jazz score is loud and at times almost overwhelming. The photography makes 1964 New York grimy, smoggy, and dangerous.
If you haven't seen it, catch it if you have the chance. You're not likely to forget it in a hurry. "
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Gets two thumbs up and I hope you get a chance to watch or rent it.
ShadowLord
Great old Movie -- The Pawnbroker - saynomore - 04-25-2006
ShadowLord Wrote:I was up late the other night -- and doing the old channel surf routine. As usual I stopped when I came to this black and white film and started watching it..
Very interesting and dark film. It actually made me think this was the type of movie RJ would watch. Anyways the film was called "The Pawnbroker" and dealt with the a number of social issues however to watch the main character's life pass and his flashback memories to his days in a Nazi concentration camp was really well done.
I did a quick check to read up on this movie and it came as no surpise that many said it was Rod Steiger best film.
This is one of the great b+w movies of all time, and I exaggerate not. Rod Steiger in his prime. Only John Cassevettes could match the power of a movie of this caliber. The pivotal point in the movie comes when the pawnbroker realizes that he is dealing not just in pawned items, but in human life itself; he then does to his hand what he has been doing to the pawn receipts throughout the movie. Shocking scene. Gotta agree with you on this one: it is one hellava movie.
AC
P.S. Check out The Killing of a Chinese Bookie if you like The Pawnbroker; not b+w, but just as good.