The Pawnbroker

I've never been a huge fan of lumet. I think because his filmography is a little inconsistant. He certainly is a great director. I saw the Pawnbroker and I think it's a really good movie. It's about a pawnbroker (imagine that) who survived the holocaust and moved to america but he still has flash backs to what happened. The editing alone is amazingly influenctial. and very very fast the energy to it is insane compared to most movies about the holocaust or survivors move very slow. This moves and you wanna follow it.
Rod Steiger is very good in it and got a best actor nomination. he lost to lee marvin but would win later for in the heat of the night.
This film also has an amazing soundtrack by Quincey Jones. I really like when they would have more jazz inspired scores. It sounds better and isn't as stuffy as the classical score thing that everyone seems to be stuck on.

Anyway all though some have said it's not on dvd. i found it on amazon. The print i saw was on a vhs and it was very clean and beautiful. I hope the did an even better job on the dvd or at least restored the print a little. If you havn't seen this your doing your self a huge dis service by not doing so.

Also two side notes one

The austin powers theme came from this film

second alot of people have said that there are certain new york directors who capture the city really well. Alot of people have always said Woody Allen but everyone i know who grew up in the city says Sidney Lumet. I havn't seen all his new york stuff but during one scene there's a big scene outside and this lady from a window is looking down on the crowd with a look that only someone who's lived in new york would know. and part of me thinks she wasn't an actress they just filmed her. Regardless it works real fucking well.