x

Want Free Access to The Pawnbroker Pics & Clips?

The Pawnbroker

The Pawnbroker (1964)

Brief Nudity

Top Scene

Review

A classic of 1960s Hollywood filmmaking, Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker (1964) shows flashes of the brilliance that distinguishes the director’s ’70s classics, such as Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and Network (1976). Rod Steiger was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Sol Nazerman, a Holocaust survivor who works as the proprietor of a New York City pawnshop. Caustically embittered, Nazerman discovers that the prejudice he encounters in Harlem is a faint respite from the horrors he witnessed abroad. With little faith in his fellow man, Nazerman drifts from one day to the next without satisfaction or salvation, unable to confront the injustices that mar his daily life. Lumet’s film is heavy, heady stuff, but it’s not without its flashes of gratuitous fun. Linda Geiser and Thelma Oliver both lend the film some candid color by flashing their fronts to the tortured Steiger, who’s too lost in his nightmarish flashbacks to pay due mind.