Wednesday 20 March 2013

The Pawnbroker (1964 Sidney Lumet)

The third recent film to show a concentration camp tatoo (the others being Harold and Maude and Marathon Man - a few days later another one popped up in Foyle's War). For some reason watching Rod Steiger made me think of Mr & Mrs Woolf thoroughly enjoying No Way To Treat a Lady all those years ago (so I immediately bought it). He's very good and not wholly unsympathetic as editor Ralph Rosenblum would have it in his book When the Shooting Stops.


Quincy Jones is using harpsichords etc. and I wonder if this influenced young John Barry?

The editing is extraordinary and isn't really done in this way any more and though it is clearly inspired by Resnais in fact it goes back to Abel Gance - the French forgot their own innovation.

In an in-reference to Brock Peters we walk past a cinema showing The L Shaped Room.
Also featuring Geraldine Fitzgerald, Jamie Sanchez (The Wild Bunch), Raymond St Jacques.

Classy ph. by Boris Kaufman.

Channel 4's 4x3 print is slightly cropped but I don't think it's as wide as 16x9.

Harrowing train scene / editing.
Ending is chaotic.

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