The Pawnbroker

Sol Nazerman runs a pawnshop in Harlem and survived the camps. He is cold and merciless with his customers, and the past keeps entering the day without permission. Sidney Lumet built those intrusions under the influence of Alain Resnais: a frame or two of the camps cut into the present, with the fragments lengthening over time. The trauma is not narrated, it is edited. Rod Steiger's performance changed his career, and he later called this his favourite film by a long shot. Its place in film history comes from censorship. It became the first American film to receive Production Code approval while showing bare breasts, the first in a series of injuries to the Code that would prove fatal within three years. The Code was abolished in 1968. Quincy Jones wrote the score, which includes Soul Bossa Nova, later repurposed as the theme for the Austin Powers films. It is regarded as the first major American film to address the aftermath of the Holocaust from a survivor's point of view. Who it is for: viewers interested in how trauma can be expressed formally. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a sympathetic lead. Nazerman is cruel to everyone around him, and the film shows that without explaining it.