The Pawnbroker

Allied Artists Pictures | Release Date: April 20, 1965

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

69	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Also unforgettable is Steiger's towering performance as the volatile survivor, a powder keg of hateful remembrances. Read full review

Nathan Rabin

Sidney Lumet’s uncomfortably intense adaptation of Edward Lewis Wallant’s novel gets inside Nazerman’s skin and lets the audience see the world as he does: as unspeakably vulgar, corrupt, and oppressive, a nightmare from which he cannot wake up. Read full review

Bosley Crowther

Remarkable...[a] most uncommon film, which projects a disagreeable subject with power and cogency. Read full review

Trae Stanley

Visually, Lumet's use of gritty black-and-white realism to locate the story is also powerful. Read full review

Michael Wilmington

When the film stays simple, and concentrates on the actors--as in Juano Hernandez's withering bit as the old man who wants to talk--it's almost great. [28 July 1996, p.74]

Staff (Not Credited)

There is little plot in the regular sense, but a series of episodes spanning just a few days of the present, which recall many harrowing experiences of the past. Some are absorbing, but others seem to lack the dramatic punch for which the director must have strived. Read full review

The Observer (UK)Philip French

The movie is brilliantly photographed in black and white by Boris Kaufman (who lit On the Waterfront and 12 Angry Men ), but this ambitious work strains for effect in trying to make Steiger's character the focus for half the problems of the twentieth century. [9 July 2000]

Staff (Not Credited)

An uneasy mixture of European art movie (the Resnais-like flashbacks that punctuate the narrative) and American ciné-vérité (it was shot on the streets of New York), The Pawnbroker never achieves the intensity its subject matter threatens. Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

An ambitious but pretentious adaptation of Edward Lewis Wallant's novel by David Friedkin and Morton Fine, directed by Sidney Lumet. Read full review

Pauline Kael

The film is trite, and you can see the big pushes for powerful effects, yet it isn't negligible. It wrenches audiences, making them fear that they, too, could become like this man.

Andrew Sarris

A pretentious parable that manages to shrivel into drivel. Read full review