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The Pawnbroker (film)
Encyclopedia
The Pawnbroker is a 1964 drama film
, starring Rod Steiger
, Geraldine Fitzgerald
, Brock Peters
and Jaime Sánchez
and directed by Sidney Lumet
. It was adapted by Morton S. Fine
and David Friedkin from the novel of the same name
by Edward Lewis Wallant
.
The film was the first American movie 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, and was among the first American movies to feature nudity
during the Production Code and was the first film featuring 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 abandonment.
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".
d by Nazi officers in the camp. Now he operates a pawnshop in East Harlem, while living in an anonymous Bronx high-rise apartment. Numbed by his experiences, he has worked hard not to experience emotions. Nazerman is bitter and alienated, viewing the people around him as "rejects, scum." He is shown interacting cynically as he bargains with the many desperate characters pawning their goods.
Nazerman is idolized by a young Puerto Rican
, Jesus Ortiz (Sánchez) who works for Nazerman as his shop assistant, but the youth's friendship is rebuffed, as are the overtures of Marilyn Birchfield (Fitzgerald), a neighborhood social work
er.
Nazerman learns that Rodriguez (Peters), a racketeer who uses the pawnshop as a front, makes his money through prostitution
. He recalls his wife's degradation and wants no part of it. This results in a clash with Rodriguez, who threatens to kill Nazerman. Meanwhile Ortiz, his feelings hurt when Nazerman says that Ortiz means nothing to him, spitefully arranges for the pawnshop to be robbed by a neighborhood gang. During the robbery, Nazerman refuses to hand over his money. Ortiz takes the gang member's bullet intended for Nazerman, and dies in Nazerman's arms in the street.
.
Lumet, who took over the film after Arthur Hiller
was fired, initially had misgivings about Steiger being cast in the lead role. He felt that Steiger "was a rather tasteless actor — awfully talented, but completely tasteless in his choices." Lumet preferred James Mason
for the role, and comic Groucho Marx
was among the actors who had wanted to play Nazerman. However, Steiger pleasantly surprised Lumet when he agreed with him during rehearsals on the repression of the character's feelings. Lumet felt that ultimately Steiger "worked out fine."
In a 1999 televised interview, actor Rod Steiger
revealed an inspiration he took from an unlikely source of art. Over a quarter of a century after artist Pablo Picasso's 1937 Guernica (painting)
, the masterpiece inspired emotional artistic depth again when, in 1964, Steiger borrowed the silent anguish of the skyward cry of the suffering male subject, seen at the right of the canvas. The scene in the film was in the last minutes of The Pawnbroker.
. Lumet told the New York Times in an interview during the filming that, "The irony of the film is that he finds more life here than anywhere. It's outside Harlem
, in housing projects, office buildings, even the Long Island
suburbs, everywhere we show on the screen — that everything is conformist, sterile, dead."
The film was influenced by the French New Wave
films, through its use of flashback
s to reveal Nazerman's backstory. It bore similarities to two films of Alain Resnais
: Hiroshima mon Amour
(1959) and Night and Fog (1955). But a recent commentator observed that the film "is uniquely American, with its harsh, unforgiving depiction of New York City, all of it brought to vivid life by Boris Kaufman's black and white cinematography and a dynamic cast highlighted by Rod Steiger's searing portrayal of the title role."
New York Times critic Bosley Crowther
wrote that Sol Nazerman "is very much a person of today — a survivor of Nazi persecution who has become detached and remote in the modern world — he casts, as it were, the somber shadow of the legendary, ageless Wandering Jew
. That is the mythical Judea
n who taunted Jesus
on the way to Calvary
and was condemned to roam the world a lonely outcast until Jesus should come again."
, in order to take advantage of financial incentives then available for filmmakers.
Directors Stanley Kubrick
, Karel Reisz
and Franco Zeffirelli
turned down the project. Kubrick said he thought Steiger was not "all that exciting." Reisz, whose parents had died in the Holocaust, said that for "deep, personal" reasons he "could not objectively associate himself with any subject which has a background of concentration camps." Zeffirelli, then a stage director, was anxious to direct a film, but said that The Pawnbroker was "not the kind of subject [he] would wish to direct, certainly not as his first Anglo-American venture."
The film was shot in New York City, mainly on location and with minimal sets, in the fall of 1963. Much of the filming took place on Park Avenue
in Harlem, where the pawnbroker shop was set. Scenes were also filmed in Connecticut
, Jericho, New York
, and Lincoln Center.
The film had a difficult time finding a major U.S. distributor because of its nudity and grim subject matter. Producer Ely Landau had the same problem in England
until it was booked into a London theater where it had an enormously successful run. As a result, Landau arranged a distribution deal with the Arthur Rank organization, and it opened in the U.S.
Quincy Jones
composed the soundtrack for the film, including Soul Bossa Nova
, which was used in a scene at a nightclub. That would later be used as the main theme to the Austin Powers
film series.
The film was edited by Ralph Rosenblum, and is extensively discussed in his book When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins: A Film Editor's Story.
and Thelma Oliver fully exposed their breasts. The scene with Oliver, who played a prostitute, was intercut with a flashback to the concentration camp, in which Nazerman is forced to see his wife (Geiser) forced into prostitution. The nudity resulted in a "C" (condemned) rating from the Catholic Legion of Decency. The Legion felt "that a condemnation is necessary in order to put a very definite halt to the effort by producers to introduce nudity into American films." The Legion of Decency's stance was opposed by some Catholic groups, and the National Council of Churches gave the film an award for best picture of the year.
The scenes resulted in conflict with the Motion Picture Association of America
, which administered the Motion Picture Production Code. The Association initially rejected the scenes showing bare breasts and a sex scene between Sanchez and Oliver, which it described as "unacceptably sex suggestive and lustful." Despite the rejection, Landau arranged for Allied Artists to release film without the Production Code seal, and New York censors licensed The Pawnbroker without the cuts demanded by Code administrators. On a 6-3 vote, the Motion Picture Association of America
granted the film an "exception" conditional on "reduction in the length of the scenes which the Production Code Administration found unapprovable." The exception to the code was granted as a "special and unique case," and was described by The New York Times at the time as "an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent." The requested reductions of nudity were minimal, and the outcome was viewed in the media as a victory for the film's producers.
Some Jewish groups urged a boycott of the film, in the view that its presentation of a Jewish pawnbroker encouraged anti-Semitism
. Black groups felt it encouraged racial stereotypes of the inner city residents as pimps, prostitutes or drug addicts.
wrote in The New Yorker
: "By a magic more mysterious. . . than his always clever makeup, he manages to convince me at once that he is whoever he pretends to be."
New York Times critic Bosley Crowther
called it a "remarkable picture" that was "a dark and haunting drama of a man who has reasonably eschewed a role of involvement and compassion in a brutal and bitter world and has found his life barren and rootless as a consequence. It is further a drama of discovery of the need of man to try to do something for his fellow human sufferers in the troubled world of today." He praised the performances in the film, including the supporting cast.
One negative review came from Pauline Kael
, who called it "trite", but said: "You can see the big pushes for powerful effects, yet it isn't negligible. It wrenches audiences, making them fear that they, too, could become like this man. And when events strip off his armor, he doesn't discover a new, warm humanity, he discovers sharper suffering - just what his armor had protected him from. Most of the intensity comes from Steiger's performance."
, said that scenes of the camps in the film, "at least those shown in Imaginary Witness, are surprisingly mild."
It has been described as "the first stubbornly 'Jewish' film about the Holocaust", and as the foundation for the miniseries Holocaust (1978) and Schindler's List
(1993).
The Pawnbroker is viewed as one of Steiger's most notable film roles, and as one that was crucial to his ascendancy to the top ranks of his profession.
In 2002, shortly before Steiger's death, his last television interview was on Dinner for Five. Hosted by actor/director Jon Favreau
, the show was a continuing series which featured round-table dinner discussion among Favreau, and four celebrity guests from the acting profession. During the episode, Steiger cited The Pawnbroker as being the film he viewed as a significant standout of his body of work. The episode can be seen on Youtube
.
Its display of nudity, despite Production Code prohibitions on the practice at the time, is also viewed as a landmark in motion pictures. The Pawnbroker was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. In his 2008 study of films during that era, Pictures at a Revolution, author Mark Harris wrote that the MPAA's action was "the first of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years." The Code was abolished, in favor of a voluntary ratings system, in 1968.
at the 14th Berlin International Film Festival
, an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role
, and received the British Film Academy award for best foreign actor in a leading role.
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
, starring Rod Steiger
Rod Steiger
Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...
, Geraldine Fitzgerald
Geraldine Fitzgerald
Geraldine Fitzgerald, Lady Lindsay-Hogg was an Irish-American actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame.-Early life:...
, Brock Peters
Brock Peters
Brock Peters was an American actor, best known for playing the role of Tom Robinson in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird...
and Jaime Sánchez
Jaime Sánchez (actor)
Jaime Sánchez, born December 19, 1938 in Rincón, Puerto Rico, is an actor in theater, films and TV since the 1950s.His film roles include Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker , Cornel Wilde's Beach Red and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch ; his TV appearances include The Fugitive, Kojak and The...
and directed by Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
. It was adapted by Morton S. Fine
Morton S. Fine
Morton Fine was an American screenwriter.A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Fine worked in an advertising agency, a bookstore, and an aircraft factory before joining the Army Air Force in 1942. A graduate of St...
and David Friedkin from the novel of the same name
The Pawnbroker
The Pawnbroker is a novel by Edward Lewis Wallant which tells the story of Sol Nazerman, a concentration camp survivor who suffers flashbacks of his past Nazi imprisonment as he tries to cope with his daily life operating a pawn shop in East Harlem...
by Edward Lewis Wallant
Edward Lewis Wallant
Edward Lewis Wallant was an American writer.-Life:He lived most of his life in New Haven, Connecticut. Yet his years at Pratt in Brooklyn, daily commuting to the city and frequent visits to jazz clubs impacted the New York settings of his books.His first works were short stories published in the...
.
The film was the first American movie 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, and was among the first American movies to feature nudity
Nudity
Nudity is the state of wearing no clothing. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic. The amount of clothing worn depends on functional considerations and social considerations...
during the Production Code and was the first film featuring 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 abandonment.
In 2008, The Pawnbroker was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot summary
With the rise of Hitler, Sol Nazerman (Steiger), a German-Jewish university professor, was dragged to a concentration camp along with his family. He saw his two children die (one while riding in a cattle car) and his wife rapeRape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
d by Nazi officers in the camp. Now he operates a pawnshop in East Harlem, while living in an anonymous Bronx high-rise apartment. Numbed by his experiences, he has worked hard not to experience emotions. Nazerman is bitter and alienated, viewing the people around him as "rejects, scum." He is shown interacting cynically as he bargains with the many desperate characters pawning their goods.
Nazerman is idolized by a young Puerto Rican
Puerto Rican people
A Puerto Rican is a person who was born in Puerto Rico.Puerto Ricans born and raised in the continental United States are also sometimes referred to as Puerto Ricans, although they were not born in Puerto Rico...
, Jesus Ortiz (Sánchez) who works for Nazerman as his shop assistant, but the youth's friendship is rebuffed, as are the overtures of Marilyn Birchfield (Fitzgerald), a neighborhood social work
Social work
Social Work is a professional and academic discipline that seeks to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of an individual, group, or community by intervening through research, policy, community organizing, direct practice, and teaching on behalf of those afflicted with poverty or any real or...
er.
Nazerman learns that Rodriguez (Peters), a racketeer who uses the pawnshop as a front, makes his money through prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
. He recalls his wife's degradation and wants no part of it. This results in a clash with Rodriguez, who threatens to kill Nazerman. Meanwhile Ortiz, his feelings hurt when Nazerman says that Ortiz means nothing to him, spitefully arranges for the pawnshop to be robbed by a neighborhood gang. During the robbery, Nazerman refuses to hand over his money. Ortiz takes the gang member's bullet intended for Nazerman, and dies in Nazerman's arms in the street.
Cast
- Rod SteigerRod SteigerRodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...
- Sol Nazerman - Geraldine FitzgeraldGeraldine FitzgeraldGeraldine Fitzgerald, Lady Lindsay-Hogg was an Irish-American actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame.-Early life:...
- Marilyn Birchfield - Brock PetersBrock PetersBrock Peters was an American actor, best known for playing the role of Tom Robinson in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird...
- Rodriguez - Jaime SánchezJaime Sánchez (actor)Jaime Sánchez, born December 19, 1938 in Rincón, Puerto Rico, is an actor in theater, films and TV since the 1950s.His film roles include Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker , Cornel Wilde's Beach Red and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch ; his TV appearances include The Fugitive, Kojak and The...
- Jesus Ortiz - Thelma Oliver - Ortiz's girl
- Marketa KimbrellMarketa KimbrellMarketa Kimbrell was an Czechoslovakian-born American actress and professor of acting and film directing. In 1970, Kimbrell and actor Richard Levy founded the New York Street Theater Caravan, a theater company which brought stage productions to audiences who otherwise might not have access to...
- Tessie - Baruch LumetBaruch LumetBaruch Lumet was a Jewish actor best known for his work in the Yiddish theater.Lumet was born in Warsaw, Russian Empire, and immigrated to the United States with his wife Eugenia Gitl Lumet and daughter Feiga in 1922, where his son, film director Sidney Lumet was born.Although he appeared...
- Mendel - Juano HernándezJuano HernándezJuano Hernández was a Puerto Rican stage and film actor of African descent who was a pioneer in the African-American film industry. He made his debut in an Oscar Micheaux film, "The Girl from Chicago" which was directed at black audiences. Hernández also performed in a serious of dramatic roles in...
- Mr. Smith - Linda GeiserLinda GeiserLinda Geiser is a Swiss film and television actress best known for her role in the Swiss TV series Lüthi und Blanc as Johanna Blanc....
- Ruth Nazerman - Nancy R. Pollock - Bertha
- Raymond St. JacquesRaymond St. JacquesRaymond St. Jacques was an American actor.-Career:St. Jacques was born James Arthur Johnson in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Vivienne Johnson, a medical technician...
- Tangee - Morgan FreemanMorgan FreemanMorgan Freeman is an American actor, film director, aviator and narrator. He is noted for his reserved demeanor and authoritative speaking voice. Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus and won...
- Man on Street (uncredited)
Cast notes
Steiger became involved in the film in 1962, a year after the Wallant novel was published, and was involved in an early reworking of the script. He received $50,000 for his performance, far lower than his usual rate, because he trusted Lumet, with whom he had worked on television in the series You Are ThereYou Are There
You Are There is the fourth studio album by the Japanese instrumental rock band Mono, a double album released on 15 March 2006. The album was recorded in 2005 at Electrical Audio in Chicago, Illinois with recording engineer Steve Albini...
.
Lumet, who took over the film after Arthur Hiller
Arthur Hiller
Arthur Hiller, OC is a Canadian film director. His filmography includes 33 major studio releases, including the 1970 film Love Story...
was fired, initially had misgivings about Steiger being cast in the lead role. He felt that Steiger "was a rather tasteless actor — awfully talented, but completely tasteless in his choices." Lumet preferred James Mason
James Mason
James Neville Mason was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films. Mason remained a powerful figure in the industry throughout his career and was nominated for three Academy Awards as well as three Golden Globes .- Early life :Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the...
for the role, and comic Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...
was among the actors who had wanted to play Nazerman. However, Steiger pleasantly surprised Lumet when he agreed with him during rehearsals on the repression of the character's feelings. Lumet felt that ultimately Steiger "worked out fine."
In a 1999 televised interview, actor Rod Steiger
Rod Steiger
Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...
revealed an inspiration he took from an unlikely source of art. Over a quarter of a century after artist Pablo Picasso's 1937 Guernica (painting)
Guernica (painting)
Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War...
, the masterpiece inspired emotional artistic depth again when, in 1964, Steiger borrowed the silent anguish of the skyward cry of the suffering male subject, seen at the right of the canvas. The scene in the film was in the last minutes of The Pawnbroker.
Major themes
The Pawnbroker tells the story of a man whose spiritual "death" in the concentration camps causes him to bury himself in the most dismal location that he can find: a slum in upper ManhattanManhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. Lumet told the New York Times in an interview during the filming that, "The irony of the film is that he finds more life here than anywhere. It's outside Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, in housing projects, office buildings, even the Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
suburbs, everywhere we show on the screen — that everything is conformist, sterile, dead."
The film was influenced by the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
films, through its use of flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
s to reveal Nazerman's backstory. It bore similarities to two films of Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
: Hiroshima mon Amour
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Hiroshima mon amour is an acclaimed 1959 drama film directed by French film director Alain Resnais, with a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. It is the documentation of an intensely personal conversation between a French-Japanese couple about memory and forgetfulness...
(1959) and Night and Fog (1955). But a recent commentator observed that the film "is uniquely American, with its harsh, unforgiving depiction of New York City, all of it brought to vivid life by Boris Kaufman's black and white cinematography and a dynamic cast highlighted by Rod Steiger's searing portrayal of the title role."
New York Times critic Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
wrote that Sol Nazerman "is very much a person of today — a survivor of Nazi persecution who has become detached and remote in the modern world — he casts, as it were, the somber shadow of the legendary, ageless Wandering Jew
Wandering Jew
The Wandering Jew is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming...
. That is the mythical Judea
Judea
Judea or Judæa was the name of the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina following the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.-Etymology:The...
n who taunted Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
on the way to Calvary
Calvary
Calvary or Golgotha was the site, outside of ancient Jerusalem’s early first century walls, at which the crucifixion of Jesus is said to have occurred. Calvary and Golgotha are the English names for the site used in Western Christianity...
and was condemned to roam the world a lonely outcast until Jesus should come again."
Development
The film initially was considered for production in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, in order to take advantage of financial incentives then available for filmmakers.
Directors Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
, Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post–war Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in 1950s and 1960s British cinema.-Early life:...
and Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....
turned down the project. Kubrick said he thought Steiger was not "all that exciting." Reisz, whose parents had died in the Holocaust, said that for "deep, personal" reasons he "could not objectively associate himself with any subject which has a background of concentration camps." Zeffirelli, then a stage director, was anxious to direct a film, but said that The Pawnbroker was "not the kind of subject [he] would wish to direct, certainly not as his first Anglo-American venture."
The film was shot in New York City, mainly on location and with minimal sets, in the fall of 1963. Much of the filming took place on Park Avenue
Park Avenue (Manhattan)
Park Avenue is a wide boulevard that carries north and southbound traffic in New York City borough of Manhattan. Through most of its length, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east....
in Harlem, where the pawnbroker shop was set. Scenes were also filmed in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, Jericho, New York
Jericho, New York
Jericho is a hamlet in Nassau County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2010 Census, the CDP population was 13,567. The area is served by the Jericho Union Free School District, the boundaries of which differ somewhat from those of the hamlet...
, and Lincoln Center.
Post-production and release
The film premiered in June 1964 at the Berlin International Film Festival, and was released in the United States in April 1965.The film had a difficult time finding a major U.S. distributor because of its nudity and grim subject matter. Producer Ely Landau had the same problem in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
until it was booked into a London theater where it had an enormously successful run. As a result, Landau arranged a distribution deal with the Arthur Rank organization, and it opened in the U.S.
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...
composed the soundtrack for the film, including Soul Bossa Nova
Soul Bossa Nova
"Soul Bossa Nova" is a popular instrumental title, composed by and first performed by American impresario, jazz composer, arranger and record producer Quincy Jones. It first appeared on his 1962 Big Band Bossa Nova big band album on Mercury Records. Multi-reed player Rahsaan Roland Kirk played the...
, which was used in a scene at a nightclub. That would later be used as the main theme to the Austin Powers
Austin Powers (film series)
The Austin Powers series is a series of action-comedy films written by and starring Mike Myers as the title character, directed by Jay Roach and distributed by New Line Cinema...
film series.
The film was edited by Ralph Rosenblum, and is extensively discussed in his book When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins: A Film Editor's Story.
Production Code controversy
The film was controversial for depicting nude scenes in which actresses Linda GeiserLinda Geiser
Linda Geiser is a Swiss film and television actress best known for her role in the Swiss TV series Lüthi und Blanc as Johanna Blanc....
and Thelma Oliver fully exposed their breasts. The scene with Oliver, who played a prostitute, was intercut with a flashback to the concentration camp, in which Nazerman is forced to see his wife (Geiser) forced into prostitution. The nudity resulted in a "C" (condemned) rating from the Catholic Legion of Decency. The Legion felt "that a condemnation is necessary in order to put a very definite halt to the effort by producers to introduce nudity into American films." The Legion of Decency's stance was opposed by some Catholic groups, and the National Council of Churches gave the film an award for best picture of the year.
The scenes resulted in conflict with the Motion Picture Association of America
Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
, which administered the Motion Picture Production Code. The Association initially rejected the scenes showing bare breasts and a sex scene between Sanchez and Oliver, which it described as "unacceptably sex suggestive and lustful." Despite the rejection, Landau arranged for Allied Artists to release film without the Production Code seal, and New York censors licensed The Pawnbroker without the cuts demanded by Code administrators. On a 6-3 vote, the Motion Picture Association of America
Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
granted the film an "exception" conditional on "reduction in the length of the scenes which the Production Code Administration found unapprovable." The exception to the code was granted as a "special and unique case," and was described by The New York Times at the time as "an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent." The requested reductions of nudity were minimal, and the outcome was viewed in the media as a victory for the film's producers.
Some Jewish groups urged a boycott of the film, in the view that its presentation of a Jewish pawnbroker encouraged anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
. Black groups felt it encouraged racial stereotypes of the inner city residents as pimps, prostitutes or drug addicts.
Critical reaction
The film, and Steiger's performance in particular, was greeted by widespread critical acclaim. Life magazine praised Steiger's "endless versatility." Brendan GillBrendan Gill
Brendan Gill wrote for The New Yorker for more than 60 years. He also contributed film criticism for Film Comment and wrote a popular book about his time at the New Yorker magazine.-Biography:...
wrote in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
: "By a magic more mysterious. . . than his always clever makeup, he manages to convince me at once that he is whoever he pretends to be."
New York Times critic Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
called it a "remarkable picture" that was "a dark and haunting drama of a man who has reasonably eschewed a role of involvement and compassion in a brutal and bitter world and has found his life barren and rootless as a consequence. It is further a drama of discovery of the need of man to try to do something for his fellow human sufferers in the troubled world of today." He praised the performances in the film, including the supporting cast.
One negative review came from Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
, who called it "trite", but said: "You can see the big pushes for powerful effects, yet it isn't negligible. It wrenches audiences, making them fear that they, too, could become like this man. And when events strip off his armor, he doesn't discover a new, warm humanity, he discovers sharper suffering - just what his armor had protected him from. Most of the intensity comes from Steiger's performance."
Legacy
In recent years, with a revival of interest in the Holocaust, the film has become noted as the first major American film that even tried to recreate the horrors of the camps. A New York Times review of a 2005 documentary on Hollywood's treatment of the Holocaust, Imaginary WitnessImaginary Witness
Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust is a 2004 documentary film directed by Daniel Anker and narrated by Gene Hackman that examines the treatment of the Holocaust in Hollywood films over a period of sixty years and the impact of the films on public perception and thinking, and vice versa...
, said that scenes of the camps in the film, "at least those shown in Imaginary Witness, are surprisingly mild."
It has been described as "the first stubbornly 'Jewish' film about the Holocaust", and as the foundation for the miniseries Holocaust (1978) and Schindler's List
Schindler's List
Schindler's List is a 1993 American film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on the novel Schindler's Ark...
(1993).
The Pawnbroker is viewed as one of Steiger's most notable film roles, and as one that was crucial to his ascendancy to the top ranks of his profession.
In 2002, shortly before Steiger's death, his last television interview was on Dinner for Five. Hosted by actor/director Jon Favreau
Jon Favreau
Jonathan Kolia "Jon" Favreau is an American actor, screenwriter, film director and comedian. As an actor, he is best known for his roles in Rudy, Swingers , Very Bad Things, and The Break-Up. His notable directorial efforts include Elf, Iron Man and its sequel, and Cowboys & Aliens...
, the show was a continuing series which featured round-table dinner discussion among Favreau, and four celebrity guests from the acting profession. During the episode, Steiger cited The Pawnbroker as being the film he viewed as a significant standout of his body of work. The episode can be seen on Youtube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.
Its display of nudity, despite Production Code prohibitions on the practice at the time, is also viewed as a landmark in motion pictures. The Pawnbroker was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. In his 2008 study of films during that era, Pictures at a Revolution, author Mark Harris wrote that the MPAA's action was "the first of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years." The Code was abolished, in favor of a voluntary ratings system, in 1968.
Awards
Steiger received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor - Drama, the Silver Bear for Best ActorSilver Bear for Best Actor
The Silver Bear for Best Actor is the Berlin International Film Festival's award for achievement in performance by an actor.- Awards :- External links :*...
at the 14th Berlin International Film Festival
14th Berlin International Film Festival
The 14th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from June 26 to July 7, 1964.-Jury:* Anthony Mann * Hermann Schwerin* Lucas Demare* Jacques Doniol-Valcroze* Yorgos Javellas* Richard Todd* Takashi Hamama* Gerd Ressing...
, an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
, and received the British Film Academy award for best foreign actor in a leading role.