The Pawnbroker depicts the interaction among ethnicities in a populated neighborhood. This interaction is seen between the Jewish, African-American, and Puerto-Rican residents in this diversely fashioned Harlem environment. First and far most, the beginning of the movie shows various types of people coming into the pawnshop. What is prominent about this is that they are all here for a reason. Somehow, at some time, they were given the chance to come to New York; a chance to make a living however they choose. However, the pawnbroker, Sol Nazerman has a completely different story. When asked by Marilyn why he came here, Sol repeatedly says, “I don’t know.” What he does know is that his pawnshop is enough to make him a living.
Sol, in a sense, is not part of the relationship between other ethnicities. Though he claims that he does not discriminate, he actually does; not racially, but intellectually. Sol feels everyone else is just scum, and he is not. However all the other ethnic groups intermingle well with each other as seen when Rodriguez’s trio is composed of an African-American, a Puerto-Rican, and (to use the term very loosely as a result of Richard Dyer’s reading) a ‘white’ man. Everyone is trying to make a living, somehow and someway and this is what relates the ethnic groups to one another.
There is an additional relationship addressed in the movie. This relationship is the past ghetto (concentration camps) and the present ghetto where the film takes place (Harlem). The first relationship between these two ghettos is the father-son relationship. In a cattle car ride, Nazerman’s son perishes. Once in Harlem, he is, in a sense, given another son, another chance to be the father of Jesus. Jesus, who had no other father figure present, is then turned away. Though the ghetto in the first scenario took away Sol’s son, the latter of the situation is because of Sol’s inability to reconcile with his past. Additionally, the brutal violence is present in both ghettos as seen when the young teenager was attacked by a gang. In the old ghetto, the Jewish man was attacked by a dog with no one to help him either. Lastly, the most obvious relationship between the past and present ghetto is the idea that Sol is trapped. In the old ghetto, he was imprisoned and that is what he continues to do in Harlem. The bars in his pawnshop represent that he himself is still mentally trapped of images of the past, something he cannot escape.
The film enables us to make these connections as a result of its flashbacks which mimics that of post-traumatic stress disorder. Sol’s images of the past flood his mind and as he describes, “they keep rushing in.” More so, we can draw these connections because of the use of flashback in certain scenarios. The film utilizes ‘graphic match’ which is cutting scenes between Mabel his Sol’s wife to indicate that Sol is being reminded of what happened in the old ghetto, thus establishing the connection.
