Word: nazerman
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...performances, there is uncommon variety in his characterizations. His recent range includes an evocation of Pope John XXIII in the semidocumentary And There Came a Man; Mr. Joyboy, the simpering mortician of The Loved One; the lascivious Komarovsky in Doctor Zhivago; and his favorite role, the guilt-racked Nazerman in The Pawnbroker...
...best friend's widow. He spurns the friendship of a sympathetic social worker (Geraldine Fitzgerald), slowly begins to soften toward his troubled young Puerto Rican assistant (Jaime Sanchez), then crushes the boy by telling him: "You are nothing to me." In the tragic aftermath of that rejection, Nazerman's dead soul is awakened at least a little...
...prostitutes and all their prey. Then in flashbacks-some spliced subliminally into the narrative two or three frames at a time, others developed in excruciating detail-Lumet adroitly dramatizes the agony of memories. Sunning himself on a lawn in a bleak outpost of suburbia where he lives with relatives, Nazerman's mind melts back to an idyllic day in the old country with his wife and children. In a teeming subway, he suddenly sees the boxcar-prison where his son was trampled underfoot. In the pawnshop, when a Negro harlot strips to the waist, enticing him to pay double...
...times Lumet's style seems self-conscious and stagy, unable to distinguish brass from gold, with more clever camera work than the somber occasions warrant and too many theatrically glib vignettes. One jarring note is struck by a vicious black racketeer and brothel master (Brock Peters) who supports Nazerman's pawnshop as a front for his deals while basking in the luxury of an improbable white-on-white world adorned with white jackets, white walls, and a blond loverboy...
...more basic flaw of the film is evidenced in the climactic cry of anguish that sounds Sol Nazerman's re-entry into the human race but echoes mostly as a triumph for Actor Steiger. Saddled with dialogue better suited to a symbol, Steiger speaks it like a man, succeeding so well that the character incriminates himself. This misanthropic pawnbroker has suffered no more than millions of Jews; he is simply meaner in spirit, a wretched and pitiable case study wearing the tragic mask...