Rent The Pawnbroker (1965)

Harlem Inferno. - The Pawnbroker review by Steve

Intense drama about the suppressed memories of Sol Nazerman, a holocaust survivor living among the violence and squalor of Harlem, NY. The Pawnbroker was groundbreaking in its presentation of the Jewish survivors of the concentration camps in contemporary America.  

Rod Steiger's performance feels authentic as the man haunted by subliminal flashbacks to the camps. We also glimpse in these suppressed images, his present day traumas. The brutality of the streets. But his shop is a hub for laundering money. In seeking to be invisible, and rendering himself numb to cruelty, he helps to sustain it.

It is interesting how distant Sol is to his present reality. A simple remark about his religion can only be answered in terms of 7000 years of struggle. But he is blind to the historic suffering of black Americans. He is so removed from his environment he can no longer see the humanity in himself or anyone.

Most of the film is shot in the pawnshop, with Steiger trapped in the wire security cages. But when Lumet does stray outside, his camera captures Harlem most realistically. It is a powerful, very depressing film which gives an identity to a hidden, voiceless demographic through Steiger's potent, unreachable anguish.