1964 film by Sidney Lumet
The Pawnbroker is a 1964 American drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Jaime Sánchez, and Morgan Freeman in his feature film debut. The screenplay was an adaptation by Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin of the 1961 novel of the same name by Edward Lewis Wallant.
The film was the first produced entirely in the United States to deal with the Holocaust from the viewpoint of a survivor. It earned international acclaim for Steiger, launching his career as an A-list actor. It was among the first American films to feature a homosexual character and nudity during the Production Code, and was the first film featuring a woman's bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. Although it was publicly announced to be a special exception, the controversy proved to be first of similar major challenges to the Code that ultimately led to its abrogation.
In 2008, The Pawnbroker was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.