Review – The Pawnbroker

This works better as a piece of film history than as a film. In the early 1960s the American movie industry found itself hampered by its own production code and increasingly unable to compete with films from European market. This Sidney Lumet production was the first to successfully petition for code exception in order to show a brief nude scene. It’s also one of the first movies to take on the horrors of the Holocaust. It’s also Morgan Freeman’s big screen debut in an uncredited role. Unfortunately the picture itself is hard to watch. Rod Steiger plays the title character, emotionally killed decades earlier by the Nazis but still going through the motions of running a pawn shop in one of the seedier sections of New York City. Though the concept had potential, the French New Wave aesthetic, laconic plot, theatrical dialogue and discordant Quincy Jones score thoroughly spoil the experience. See if desperate