The Pawnbroker (1964)

Directed by

Sidney Lumet

Genre

drama film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 56m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.1 of 10 from 176 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A Jewish pawnbroker in Harlem runs his shop with cold detachment while haunted by traumatic memories of the Holocaust. He struggles to connect with people around him including his assistant and a social worker who try to reach him.

somberbroodingemotionally intenseslow-burnmelancholicunflinchinggrittyrestrained

What happens

The Pawnbroker is a 1964 American drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Jaime Sánchez, and Morgan Freeman in his feature film debut. The screenplay was an adaptation by Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin of the 1961 novel of the same name by Edward Lewis Wallant. The film was the first produced entirely in the United States to deal with the Holocaust from the viewpoint of a survivor. It earned international acclaim for Steiger, launching his career as an A-list actor. It was among the first American films to feature a homosexual character and nudity during the Production Code, and was the first film featuring a woman's bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. Although it was publicly announced to be a special exception, the controversy proved to be first of similar major challenges to the Code that ultimately led to its abrogation. In 2008, The Pawnbroker was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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