IMDb plot summary: A Jewish pawnbroker, victim of Nazi persecution, loses all faith in his fellow man until he realizes too late the tragedy of his actions.
Directed by Sidney Lumet. Starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, and Jaime Sánchez.
I really love when Sidney Lumet does these narrowly focused character-centric stories. He manages to get inside his character's heads and convey a great deal about them with very little. That absolutely happens here. Even while Nazerman treats everyone around him poorly, the film brings out such empathy for him by showing how absolutely miserably trapped he is, how he can't escape what's happened to him in the past, and how he doesn't know how to move forward from seeing the worst of humanity. It's not just his show, though -- the side characters, particularly Nazerman's eager assistant and the friendly-but-naive charity worker who just opened up down the street, also make every moment they're on screen interesting. And then we have the wide array of characters who come into the shop to pawn their items -- such a rich tapestry of characters, any of whom I could have spent more time with. I haven't even had time to talk about the cinematography or the use of sound in this film -- I'll just have to close by saying I was deeply moved by this.
How it entered my Flickchart:
The Pawnbroker > The Misfits
The Pawnbroker > The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Pawnbroker < Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
The Pawnbroker < The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Pawnbroker > Hidden Figures
The Pawnbroker > Witness
The Pawnbroker > The Bumblebee Flies Anyway
The Pawnbroker < The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Pawnbroker < Stowaway
The Pawnbroker > The Farewell
The Pawnbroker > Onward
The Pawnbroker < Booksmart
Final spot: #658 out of 3401, or 81%.
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