Word: nazemann
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...Nazemann goes into a spin and walks all the night around the city. The camera zeroes in on him moving through the crowds in Times Square, alone despite the human torrent around him. He is out of touch with any society when he crosses street after street against the traffic lights...
...creating his modern tragedy, Director Lumet has contrived to effect his catharsis. Why should Nazemann, who has been living in New York for twenty years, exposed to the same influences, suddenly wake up? Why should he be able to recall traumas from repression when anyone else would need an analyst? The death of a Puerto Rican boy who intercepts a bullet meant for Nazemann seems far too circumstantial. Also questionable is Lumet's use of stomach-turners, such as the sequence where Nazemann jabs a long pin through his hand...
...city creates a matrix which binds up the different devices and makes them effective. The pawnbroker's cage or the ugly apartment houses standing for the community achieve a near-symbolism, so that the viewer stops thinking in terms of reality and enters the special world of Nazemann...
...might wonder though how a simple pawnbroker like Nazemann could have the intellectual capacity to analyze his experience in the manner that true tragedy demands. But we must remember that Nazemann has fallen in life and we arrive at his story in medias res. The pimp he works for calls him "professor," and it vaguely suggested in other places that he once held such a position. Lumet's failure to clarify this point or indeed to provide his audience with a strong picture of Nazemann before his fall constitutes a major flaw of the film...
...Pawnbroker achieves such excellence precisely because Nazemann does have that capacity. His search for meaning becomes our own, and the understanding which he finds can also be ours if we are willing to share, if only vicariously, the immensity of his suffering...