The Pawnbroker (Members’ Choice) Directed by Sidney Lumet. USA, 1964. 116 min. (12) With Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Jaime Sánchez

Holocaust Memorial Day Film. Special guest: The Mayor of Merton Post-screening Q&A with film historian Peter Evans

Several stars were eager to play the title role, among them: Groucho Marx. Steiger offered to appear for much reduced fee, and Lumet was won over by the actor’s willingness to rein in his trademark expansiveness and repress the character’s emotions. Steiger even insisted on paring down his lines to render his character more realistic and socially alienated. For one climactic scene, he drew his inspiration from the silent depiction of trauma and anguish in Picasso's Guernica. The film premiered to high acclaim at the Berlin Int’l Film Festival; however, it had difficulty finding a distributor in the USA/UK, due to its "gritty realism & challenging subject matter." The 1966 Oscars lavished 5 awards on The Sound of Music, with its beguiling tale of a musical family escaping the Nazis, while almost ignoring Lumet’s extraordinary psychological portrait of a survivor, filmed in stark b&w on location in Spanish-Harlem. Two years later, Steiger would win an Oscar for In the Heat of the Night, but he always considered Sol Nazerman his best performance.

Watch for the actor Morgan Freeman in his uncredited debut role as a ’man on the street.’ "a drama of discovery of the need of man to try to do something for his fellow human sufferers in the troubled world of today" Bosley Crowther, New York Times, 1965

NY Film Critics: Best Film & Actor; Golden Globe / BAFTA: Steiger; Berlin Int’l Film Festival: Silver Bear (Steiger), Golden Bear nominatioin (Lumet); 1 Oscar nomination: Steiger

______Tear between the dotted lines below to rate the film (5* = top score) & hand in. Please write any comments on the back of this slip.