Director Sidney Lumet (The Group, 1966) could have made an excellent film just about the customers of a pawn shop, the haunted individuals haggling for more cash than they will ever be paid, the sad sacks, junkies, lost souls and general losers whose stories are told in the items they pawn or redeem – candlesticks, lamps, radios, musical instruments, occasionally themselves. You don’t need to be a pawnbroker to know that three tough guys turning up with a pricey lawnmower are dealing in stolen property.
And it comes as something of a surprise to learn that the pawnbroker is involved in some kind of money-laundering scam for a local gangster. Clearly shot on location on a bustling low-rent area, north of 116th St in East Harlem, New York, there’s enough going on in the streets – the markets, the tenements, poolrooms, the bustle, the eternal noise – to keep you hooked.
But you might think twice about positing as your hero an “absolute bastard” as Lumet himself described shop owner Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger). He is more haunted than any of his clientele, a Holocaust survivor, plagued by flashbacks to the concentration camp where he witnessed his son die and his wife raped. He is devoid of life, completely shut down to any emotion, rejecting overtures of friendship, and his life is played out in tiny elliptical shreds.
He does not even derive any enjoyment out of his affair with a widow and although he claims to worship money – according to him the only absolute outside of the speed of light – that brings no fulfillment either. He is accused of being among “the walking dead.” It is surprising he has lasted so long without imploding After his war experience, you would have to wonder at a man who spends his life behind the bars of the grille in his shop and just in case he considers escaping from his predicament designer Richard Sylbert (Chinatown, 1973) incorporates other visual aspects of imprisonment into the production.
Around Sol are a set of very lively characters, his ambitious assistant Jesus (Jaime Sanchez) trying to go straight and his girlfriend (Thelma Oliver), a very smooth and wealthy gay gangster (Brock Peters), and a trio of small-time hoods with whom the assistant is friendly. But also the deranged and the lonely. A widowed social worker Marilyn (Geraldine Fitzgerald) who suffers from the “malady of loneliness” offers him friendship but is rejected.
There is little plot to speak of but just enough to teeter him on the brink of self-destruction. So it is primarily a character study. Unusually, Lumet observes without any sentimentality those around Steiger. “Sol has buried himself in this,” Lumet wrote in Films and Filming magazine (October 1964, p17-20) “because he needs to be with people that he can despise…This is a man who is in such agony that he must feel nothing, or he will go to pieces.” There is no redemption and he lacks the courage to commit suicide. It’s a stunning, bold picture, as raw as you can get without turning into a bloodsucker.
The film had a few firsts. It was the only mainstream American picture to deal with the Holocaust from the perspective of a survivor (although films like Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961, had shown aspects of the camp victims). It broke mainstream conventions on nudity, bare breasts being seen for the first time. Lumet experimented with incredibly short cuts – just one-frame and two-frames in places (a technique he had first used in television)- when the standard assumption was that audiences required three frames to register an image.
Rod Steiger (No Way to Treat a Lady, 1968) gives a very restrained performance, especially for an actor known for his volubility and over-acting. He seems to sink into the role. Brock Peters (Major Dundee, 1965) plays not just the first openly gay person in a mainstream picture, but the first gay African American.
Excellent support includes Jaime Sanchez (The Wild Bunch, 1969), Thelma Oliver (Black Like Me, 1964) and Geraldine Fitzgerald (Rachel, Rachel, 1968). Quincy Jones made his debut as a movie composer. If you listen closely you might detect a piece of music later made famous by the Austin Powers pictures and if you look closely to might spot a debut sighting of Morgan Freeman. Screenplay by the writing team of David Friedkin and Morton Fine (The Fool Killer, 1965) based on the bestseller by Edward Lewis Wallant.
Unmissable.
The Magnificent 60s 