Steigered

With Sidney Lumet in memory, I watched The Pawnbroker, starring Rod Steiger.  Hadn't seen it in years.  It's considered a classic--part of the National Film Registry and got four stars when I hit the info button.

I wish I could say it's great, or even good, but I didn't think it played that well.  It was probably more striking in 1965.  Just the idea of a film about a Holocaust survivor trying to deal with his guilt was, I'd guess, fairly novel then.  And the editing, with its shock cuts (almost subliminal at times) for his flashbacks, was pretty innovative then, especially for an American film. (Ralph Rosenblum had some good stories about it in his fine book When The Shooting Stops...The Cutting Begins.) Also, the racial politics--or just the cast, which is mostly blacks, Latinos and Jews--was not something you regularly saw back then.

But the truth is there's about a half-hour's worth of story here.  An alienated Holocaust survivor runs a mob-owned Harlem pawn shop.  He interacts with his customers and others, and is haunted by his memories.  Not too much else happens until an attempted hold-up where someone dies.

Not that you need a lot of story in a character study, but it helps.   Especially when there's so much speechifying, with characters stating what they believe, or what something means.  And there's enough overacting for several movies.  Even Oscar-nominated Steiger, who's playing a heavily repressed man, can't control himself, and flies off every now and then.  Furthermore, much of the action is awkwardly staged.