Something terrible happens (we\u2019ll find out exactly what later), and then Lumet cuts to the tract houses of suburban New York, where the contrasting vulgarity \u2013 loud radio, braying relatives, obnoxious teenagers \u2013 is striking. And Sol\u2019s sister-in-law is going on about one thing or another, and then she mentions that anniversary, and there\u2019s that cut, and then immediately back. \u201cMy poor sister Ruth,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The editor is Ralph Rosenblum, and that innovative editing technique is one of The Pawnbroker<\/em>\u2019s primary claims to fame; in his memoir Making Movies<\/em>, Lumet writes, \u201cWithin a year after the picture opened, every commercial on television seemed to be using the technique. They called it \u2018subliminal\u2019 cutting. My apologies to everyone.\u201d The film is also remembered for Rod Steiger\u2019s staggering, Oscar-nominated performance, and as one of the definitive New York movies of the 1960s, shot in the period just before such location shooting became (after years of struggle) commonplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lumet was one of the great New York directors \u2013 born in Philly but raised on the Lower East Side, he helmed such quintessential Gotham pictures as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, <\/em>and Prince of the City<\/em>. And, like all those movies, The Pawnbroker <\/em>looks, sounds, and feels like The City. Sol Nazerman\u2019s pawnshop is in Harlem, just off Park Avenue and 116th Street, an ideal location to explore the friction between the Jewish and African-American communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Strictly speaking, his job is customer service, but there\u2019s not much of it to speak of; he interacts with others in a flat, matter-of-fact manner, often just barking the dollar amount he\u2019s offering, steadfastly refusing to engage in small talk or pleasantries, or to acknowledge the desperation that has brought most of them to his counter (junkies needing cash for a fix, a gaunt but pregnant woman trying to pawn her wedding ring). On the other hand, when his customers go off on him (that wild-eyed junkie, for example, calls him a \u201cmoney-grubbing kike\u201d) he seems nonplussed. There\u2019s no getting to Sol Nazerman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marilyn Birchfeld (Geraldine Fitzgerald) finds this out the hard way. New to the neighborhood, she enters his shop soliciting donations for a neighborhood youth center, but also, it seems, desperate to make a human connection with him. He rebuffs her, cruelly and condescendingly. \u201cDo you always think the worst of everyone?\u201d she asks, and it\u2019s a reasonable question. But the more we find out about Sol, the harder it is to blame him for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of that opening tableaux, Sol and his family were captured by Nazis and taken to the concentration camps; only he survived. This repressed, tortured soul suffers from what we now define as PTSD \u2013 the fences of the neighborhood remind him of the concentration camps, a ride on the subway of the cattle car there, and so on. Rosenblum\u2019s \u201csubliminal edits\u201d dramatize these connections, on the screen as they exist in Sol\u2019s mind\u2019s eye, to such devastating effect that it\u2019s frankly horrifying the editing style became nothing more than a gimmick for flashy filmmakers and Mad men, because Rosenbum and Lumet aren\u2019t using it as a flourish. They\u2019re deploying and sculpting the visual language of cinema to replicate thought and memory, the specific way seemingly innocuous images can trigger similar, painful ones from our past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With such potent memories so easily triggered, it\u2019s somewhat surprising that he lives and works surrounded by bars and barriers \u2013 a literal cage in the pawnshop separates him from the customers, and cinematographer Boris Kaufman often places those bars between Steiger and his camera, or lights them to cast shadows across the actor\u2019s face, to underscore the degree to which Sol is trapped by his circumstances. Or is he? At first, it seems, the pawnbroker is trapped, as he was in the war. But as the story progresses, it becomes clear that he\u2019s put himself there, closing himself off; the cage is the buffer he uses to separate himself from the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Pawnbroker<\/em> was about how and why we establish our own prisons,\u201d Lumet wrote \u2013 and it\u2019s also about how we break free of them. As Sol\u2019s ability to repress his pain and suffering crumbles, Lumet and Kaufman stage a beautiful (and, at that time, unusual) montage of Sol walking the streets of New York City. As a snapshot of the mid-\u201860s city \u2013 capturing, in particular, the marquees of Times Square and the brand-new Lincoln Center \u2013 it\u2019s invaluable, but there\u2019s more to it. Sol is trying to clear his head, and come to terms with both his past and his present, and get to a place where he can grapple with his memories. He goes, then, to Marilyn, the only person who has reached out to him; he admires her apartment, and the little terrace with the view of the river. It\u2019s only when he walks out into that (comparatively) fresh air and open space that he can speak freely. Out in the open, he can finally open up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn\u2019t last, of course; no sooner has he tentatively opened this door than he slams it shut, and everything goes sideways. Nothing is ever that simple, and these things often don\u2019t take right away. But the closing images of this powerful film \u2013 his silent howl of pain and regret, the blood literally on his hands, a stigmata metaphor that isn\u2019t subtle but sure is effective \u2013 make it clear that Sol Nazerman has changed, and has seen the damage he is doing to himself, and to those around him. To take that journey with him, in this masterful but difficult film, is an act of emotional and mental exhaustion. But it\u2019s necessary. The best films, as has so often been said, put us in a character\u2019s shoes for two hours. The Pawnbroker <\/em>does more than that \u2013 it puts us in his head. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/pawnbroker1-1024x546.png\")
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