When Nazerman’s kindly employee Rodriguez points to the Nazi-given tattoo on his arm, he asks “Is that some kind of secret club… how do I join?” The deeply introverted Nazerman responds, “What you do to join? You learn to walk on water.”
The Pawnbroker is a magnificent film. It is the tale of a survivor, a man in his later years who now runs a pawn store amidst the bustling madness of 1960’s New York. This film serves as an examination of a psychological torment shared by many survivors, my grandfather included; survivors guilt and PTSD. In a series of events beautifully written and gorgeously shot, Nazerman is forced, for the first time in many years to feel fear again. To feel life again, to feel alive once more. But the opening of these most well constructed vaults open a floodgate of pain that leave our poor Nazerman petrified by living nightmares. Each encounter a trigger to a past trauma.
Lumets tool kit to showcase the bustling life of New York and the quiet inner-death of Nazerman are simple, but so wonderfully elegant in its execution. Sharp dialogue, exceptional performances and effective use of editing. Slicing frames of the past into images of the present, culminating in a sequence where Lumet cuts from the present to the past as if it were the shot-reverse-shot of the very same scene. It’s startling how effective this cut works, to transport you seamlessly from the claustrophobic metros of NYC to the cattle-car’s the Nazi’s would transport prisoners in. It made me physically shudder in fear. When the film first opens we see a memory; a delicate and otherworldly beauty in its presentation through score and cinematography. This scene is called back later in the film once poor Nazerman’s mental collapse is in full swing - the same sequence now overlaid with music befit a horror film. Because this is what war has done to this man, it has turned every beauty in his life into nothing but pain.
This is a deeply moving picture and truly fine character study of Nazerman and to a lesser degree his employee Rodriguez. The study of a man who’d built walls around his pain so high and vast that he’d sacrificed the essence of his own humanity. To feel, is to feel pain. To love is to remember death. To die… is a blessing. This is the world Lumet and the writers Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin have created for poor Nazerman.
“I was in Auschwitz too. I came out alive, and you came out dead.”
Fun fact: This was Quincy Jones first foray into the world of scoring for cinema.