The Pawnbroker (film)  

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The Pawnbroker is a 1965 drama film, starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters and Jaime Sánchez and directed by Sidney Lumet. It was adapted by Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin from the novel of the same name by Edward Lewis Wallant.

The film was the first American movie 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, and was among the first American movies to feature nudity during the Production Code and was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval.

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".

Production Code controversy

The film was controversial for depicting nude scenes in which actresses Linda Geiser and Thelma Oliver fully exposed their breasts. The scene with Oliver, who played a prostitute, was intercut with a flashback to the concentration camp, in which Nazerman is forced to see his wife (Geiser) forced into prostitution. The nudity resulted in a "C" (condemned) rating from the Catholic Legion of Decency. The Legion felt "that a condemnation is necessary in order to put a very definite halt to the effort by producers to introduce nudity into American films." The Legion of Decency's stance was opposed by some Catholic groups, and the National Council of Churches gave the film an award for best picture of the year.

The scenes resulted in conflict with the Motion Picture Association of America, which administered the Motion Picture Production Code. The Association initially rejected the scenes showing bare breasts and a sex scene between Sanchez and Oliver, which it described as "unacceptably sex suggestive and lustful." Despite the rejection, Landau arranged for Allied Artists to release film without the Production Code seal, and New York censors licensed The Pawnbroker without the cuts demanded by Code administrators. On a 6-3 vote, the Motion Picture Association of America granted the film an "exception" conditional on "reduction in the length of the scenes which the Production Code Administration found unapprovable." The exception to the code was granted as a "special and unique case," and was described by The New York Times at the time as "an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent." The requested reductions of nudity were minimal, and the outcome was viewed in the media as a victory for the film's producers.

Some Jewish groups urged a boycott of the film, in the view that its presentation of a Jewish pawnbroker encouraged anti-Semitism. Black groups felt it encouraged racial stereotypes of the inner city residents as pimps, prostitutes or drug addicts.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Pawnbroker (film)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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