You cannot know what film acting is without seeing Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker. Only now, so many years later can I appreciate what a stupendously difficult role this was: a man who cannot FEEL anymore. It is relentlessly grim and yet the beautiful but unobtrusive direction and camera work of Sidney Lumet never 'puts a foot wrong'. Lumet loved New York City with a passion and this film is a paean to its dark and somber immensity. Steiger should have gotten the Academy Award but the supporting actor award should have definitely gone to Juano Hernandez in a small but utterly devastating role as a autodidact black man of fragile mind and dignity who comes to the pawnshop and pawns things just to talk to the pawnbroker who was once a professor. It is Juano's heartbreaking performance of naked wounded dignity, intense loneliness and despair that provides the essential counterpoint to Mr. Nasserman's deadness of heart. His two scenes are, for me, two of the great moments in the post war cinema. Devastating. I am a fan of the jazz score and it is so right for the NYC and Harlem vibes that contrast with the scholarly and classical professor that Nasserman once was. The discordant element is a perfect fit. Just an aside: the use of slow motion for the idyllic memory scenes were a truly NEW cinematic invention of Lumet's. They were borrowed for the death scene of Bonnie and Clyde and then became such a cliche that it ended up being used in feminine hygiene commercials! Try to remember how NEW this was as a stylized expression. (Spoiler alert) Strange that so few people seem to get the meaning of the end of the film. Only when Mr. Nasserman looks down and sees he has blood on his own hands and that his cruelty and indifference has cost a young life can he rejoin the human race (hopefully).

The Pawnbroker deals not within the Holocaust but in its aftermath - such an event having an undeniable aftershock in the world's community. This type of treatment has a different power in 1964 than nowadays, where the Holocaust is a sacred and delicate topic reserved for but the most revered directors, demanding utmost solemnity. Compare this to Lumet's direction. See, for example, how the lively character of Jesus Ortiz is introduced to us. The setting is the dim, still pawn shop, and then Jesus bursts in from the side entrance like a sitcom character, blasts his trumpet a few times, and bumbles around without doing much work. The second person who breaches Sol's cage is a loud black woman, almost a walking stereotype, who reacts to his meagre offer for her ornate candlesticks with hysterical, over-the-top laughter, as if they were both in on a practical joke. Sol remains unmoved. Rod Steiger is a frigid and cold type. He shuffles silently around the interiors of his pawn shop, and Boris Kaufman captures his profile in a way so that it is always obscured and hidden behind layers of protection and distance, either physically in the shadows of bars over his face and the steel-mesh cage, or in his body language, in the way Steiger never holds a gaze while his customers unload the tales of their merchandise. They might as well be talking to a brick wall. Sol is unwavered by their nostalgia for these relics, and has a good reason for being unwilling to delve back into the past. His curt, clipped replies offer no weakness to probe or enter, and act as a foil to the emotional desperation of the customers who are often parting with treasured belongings because of dire financial need. In one particularly haunting sequence, a man walks hobbles in looking not for money but merely a face to talk to and an ear to listen, and Sol coldly turns him away. Lumet unveils the cracks slowly, as if wanting to avoid the branding of a Holocaust film immediately so that we are not so quick to cast our sympathies out. The direction doesn't force Sol's hand, but merely presents his circumstances in a way which reveals his past and how unforgettable the torment of the concentration camp must be. At first, subtly, he introduces characters which shake up the equilibrium of the lowly pawn shop. When black boys come in to pawn an expensive lawnmower, Sol directs a thinly veiled accusation at its origins, and we can feel the tension in the room. The object rocks his apparent cold impartiality, and through Steiger's eyes we witness him wresting between his disdain for the 'scum' and the silent front he has forged through years of suffering and mourning. Another is Marilyn Birchfield, the local social worker, who is so entirely honest and open-faced that we wonder how she has survived so long in Harlem. Because she presents herself as a figure of charity and future change, Sol rejects the very idea of her; such kindness and humility does not agree with his pessimistic worldview, forged from the horror of his experiences. When she tries to reach out (on the balcony of a sunny, skyscraper apartment, no less) he bitterly unleashes what he swore he would not release, and refuses her hand. The past is revealed in stuttered flashbacks, not as grand condemnations but as filtered and intensely personal memories which resurface despite Sol's insistence on pushing them down deeper. Lumet channels Alain Resnais, who in Night and Fog created a haunting juxtaposition of the past and present. While the camera hovers all around the city and slums, it picks up on indiscriminate events which are magnified through his vision; a man trying to escape from a gang of thugs reminds him of the barbed wire walls of the camp, and a pregnant girl pawning her ring forces his mind back to the image of Jewish wedding rings being picked off the conveyor line of the same fence. One sequence involving an prostitute's offer plays out like a tape rolling between two scenes over and over, as the site of bare breasts invokes an ugly memory of the rape of his wife. The unsettling effect is combined with overlapping sound tracks until the two scenes converge into one painful, singular moment for Sol. Sexual bliss has been long eradicated from his life - see how the edits flit from Jesus and his girlfriend in an animated tryst, and then to Sol and his partner, who treat sex like an oft-forgotten obligation, an act of silent passion.Steiger's greatest moment comes when he realises his complicity all these years with the local racketeer Rodriguez and his prostitution den, and his entire face scrunches up in agony because his distance has been all for nought. Quincy Jones' jazzed up, uninhibited score hurtles along with the camera through Harlem, and betrays Sol's old world sensibilities by being piped out from every murky street corner and store. There is excitement and energy leaking from the seams of the post-war society, one that he is quick to stamp out of his protégé. But in Jesus' death he finds new meaning and existence. The man who once felt the greatest pain of them all is allowed vulnerability once more, and perhaps a new start can finally begin.

You can watch Sidney Lumet's half-dozen most acclaimed movies and still have a huge handful of hidden gems to discover. I've taken it upon myself to investigate his filmography to see if there's any great films in their midst, and if The Pawnbroker remains my favourite of them all I'll stay satisfied. Lumet has evidently had a close relationship with New York and this is his bleakest portrait of it so far seen through the eyes of his most tragic character. A Jewish pawnbroker, Sol, suffering from PTSD who's constantly under the weight of money issues from every angle. A true anti-hero here, he doesn't even offer a hand to a young pregnant woman in need. His view is nihilistic, but due to his spiritual death at concentration camps where his soul was sucked dry. Now he's resigned to the prison of his pawn shop.Despite his death of spirit and desire for peace and quiet, all walks of life enter his shop, sometimes contrasted together, and they're often vibrantly desperate. Everyone is under the boot of someone here, Sol and his customers and Sol and the people he owes money to. The film keeps hold of its novelistic approach from the source material, perhaps to its detriment as it feels bloated with extraneous characters that could have been shredded. Its best for its stark 'New Wave'-esque photography with dramatic zooms and push ins and harsh black and white lighting. Some of its images feel like they burst off the screen. It utilises very abrasive editing that borrows concepts from Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour where memories appear on screen in short bursts. It's not as well handled, often feeling clumsy in its pacing, but the effect is often powerful.Paired with the bombastic score, it's often an overwhelming blend of visuals and sound that the characters feel disorientated by too. Rod Steiger holds the film on his shoulders like a bull. Often sensitive, often reserved, but when he rants in a monologue, his words hit hard. He's especially astounding in the film's closing moments. Not all the performances meet his match, some are too high strung. It is a blessing and a curse that Lumet films run a little long as the film takes too long to set itself up. It would be a favourite worthy film if I connected to haunted past narratives a little more. I feel like what it's trying to say is fascinating, and although it has the drive it needed a tiny bit more focus and balance. Perhaps The Pawnbroker is a relic of its time in post-war mourning, but it's still an admirable and arresting film. Only a handful of minor shortcomings hold it back from the level of his more obvious greats. I eagerly await more Lumet.8/10

''The Pawnbroker'' is a gripping and somewhat controversial for its time film about a Jewish genocide survivor struggling to adapt in society while facing his personal traumas. Directed by Sidney Lumet, the film is an outstanding character study with a magnificent performance from its lead.Lumet's direction has been often criticized for incorporating a rapid flashback editing influenced from the French New Wave. This is true, as the film's editing proves to be very annoying with its sudden and unexpected cuts which somehow block the characters from developing their performances further as well distracting the audience from the film's force. Most scenes are cut short, or at least shorter than they should have been which limits the audience from immersing themselves into the characters' situations. It could be said that the experimental editing doesn't work out and chokes the film rather than letting the story progress. Despite the messy editing, Lumet directs the film meticulously and manages to bring to life a truly heartbreaking story with great realism and suspense.Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin, who worked on the adaptation, do a very good job on capturing the original novel's essence, paying close attention to each character's development, meaning that all characters are very well written instead of being just ''creatures'' as Nazerman (Steiger) sees them.Concerning the technical aspects, the film works very well with its minimalistic sets and decoration, giving the audience a firm representation of reality. As mentioned above, the editing is messy but the film's black and white cinematography (praise goes to Boris Kaufman) contributes essentially to the film by revealing the main protagonist's inner psychology (Nazerman is still imprisoned by his traumas which is implied by the shadows of the bars which fall on his face at the pawn shop). Quincy Jones' score, in short, is distracting and unfitting. He uses a jazzy score which seems out of place and kills the film's suspense. While the film itself succeeds in seizing the audience's attention, Jones' score does the exact opposite. It's not a bad musical score but certainly a strange and unfitting one for the film which turns out as a very bad selection.Leaving the best for last, Steiger delivers one of the finest performances in cinematic history. Watching the film ,it's truly hard to believe that Steiger is actually acting since he is overwhelmingly believable and honest in everything he does: from his facial expressions to the way we walks, Steiger is spellbinding, making us feel the pain he has been bearing. From the first moment he appears on screen, he truly makes us believe that this character has been through a lot of difficulties and by the end of the film we've seen how much Steiger has transformed into this man who has lost everything and how far he has gone as an actor. It's one of those performances which make you shiver when you see him suffer because it's performed in such a realistic and sincere way. Simply a towering performance by Steiger in a career-turning role.''The Pawnbroker'' is considered to be a rather significant film in American history, being the first to deal with the Jewish genocide from the viewpoint of a survivor. It serves as a deep examination of a character's psychology and tackles a very devastating and sensitive subject. But above all, it is Steiger's supreme performance which makes this film unforgettable.