Reeling Backward: "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell" (1955)

"The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell" is exactly the sort of stolid, mid-century fare Golden Age Hollywood churned out with extraordinary regularity and speed. I wouldn't call it a B-picture because it stars Gary Cooper and was directed by Otto Preminger, both still at their creative peaks.

But it's not a particularly well-remembered movie. Much the same could be said of its titular character, Billy Mitchell, who is regarded as the father of the modern Air Force.

He was a World War I hero pilot who ended up in command of all American aerial forces, back when they were part of the Army. He received a field commission to brigadier general but was busted back to colonel for insubordination owing to his strenuous advocacy of air power, and eventually was court-martialed, a punishment he deliberately brought upon himself because it would lend a public forum for his criticisms.

He threw away his military career to make a point, and almost everything he advocated for eventually came to pass. Mitchell received many posthumous honors after his death in 1936, including a commission to major general by FDR, with whom he'd clashed repeatedly when the future POTUS was Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Preminger was a master of the courtroom drama ("Anatomy of a Murder," "Advise & Consent"), which takes up the second half or so of this film. That's where it really starts to snap, even though Cooper spends most of his time sitting ramrod in a chair, saving his energy for his big testimony scene at the end.

The film takes a few liberties with the historical record, with a screenplay by Milton Sperling and Emmet Lavery, with uncredited contributions by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, Michael Wilson and Ben Hecht.

For example, it's depicted that it was Mitchell disobeying orders during an air power demonstration that caused him to be demoted, when it was other antagonisms brought on by his testifying before Congress.

In the movie Mitchell is allowed to prove his air force's capability by trying to sink the mammoth German battleship Ostfriesland, but his antagonistic superior, Maj. Gen. Jimmy Guthrie (Charles Bickford), handcuffs him by ordering the planes to attack at high altitude with small bombs. After one ineffectual run, he disobeys orders, swoops in with the big boomers and easily sinks the ship.

None of this actually happened; in fact Mitchell was demoted four years later.

The film also shows Mitchell refusing to challenge the impartiality of any of the 13 judges at the court-martial, saying he wouldn't want to impugn the integrity of a general officer. In actuality his attorneys successfully struck three of them, including the president of the court (depicted, ahistorically, as Guthrie in the movie).

It's a terrific who's-who cast of mid-century actors, including folks who made a bigger name for themselves later on. Jack Lord plays Zachary Landsdowne, a young Naval aviator and friend of Billy's who dies flying a dirigible he knows to be unsafe. The turning point in the trial comes when his widow, Margaret (Elizabeth Montgomery), testifies about his sacrifice and shames the presiding officers into allowing other "justification" witnesses like herself.

Darren McGavin, eternally the dad from "A Christmas Story," turns up as Billy's right-hand man in the aviation unit, Russ. At one point he and the rest of the pilots ask Billy's permission to quit, since so many of them are dying from outdated planes and shoddy equipment, not to mention the spectacular indifference to air power from high command. Peter Graves also appears in a small role.

The meatiest parts go to the attorneys. Ralph Bellamy plays Frank Reid, another friend and a Congressman from Illinois who served as Mitchell's chief defense counsel during the trial. (That may sound strange, but people forget that national politics wasn't always a 24/7/365 gig. When he was president, Harry Truman used to go off on long weekend drives with just a Secret Service agent or two.)

Reid is a classic Hollywood politician: an elbow-twister and a glad-hander, a man who will talk your ear off and then make a job about how he talks too much. During one point in the court-martial, he stages a winding filibuster while the proper witnesses and evidence are gathered.

The prosecutor is Col. Moreland (Fred Clark), a cocksure sort who thinks he's got the case in the bag and finds himself overwhelmed and increasingly mocked. As shown in the movie, the court-martial really did take place in a dilapidated warehouse converted just for the occasion -- a not-subtle attempt to keep the lid on things.

For the final part of the proceeding, a young major, Allen Gullion, is brought in specifically to cross-examine Mitchell. He's played by Rod Steiger, and despite not showing up until the last act he makes a profound impression.

Steiger's Gullion has a slithery sort of charisma, sliding in and out of his chair with hips cocked like he's about to commence sashaying instead of stipulating, plump neck insufficiently contained by a tight military collar. He needles Mitchell and tries skillfully to trip him up. Billy, fighting off a bout of malaria, wipes his brow frequently but maintains his composure.

I think Steiger was really good in these smaller "batting cleanup" parts, whereas he could sometimes be overpowering as a lead.

This is the sort of role Cooper was born to play. He's the epitome of the movie star who always plays himself, or at least their screen persona. For Coop this meant men who were brave, true, humble, faithful, with cagey instincts if not the finest book-learnin', a believer in discipline who wasn't afraid to buck authority when doing the right thing dictated so.

Certainly this latter portion describes the real Billy Mitchell, who spent his last years in exile but whose true legacy was only realized after he was gone. A lot of people aren't aware (I wasn't) that the iconic B-25 bomber is named the Mitchell after him, the first military airplane to be done so.

 "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell," and the man it lionizes, are due for better remembrance.

Reeling Backward: "Duck, You Sucker!" (1971)

Like a lot of Sergio Leone's films, "Duck, You Sucker!" has some big ideas lurking beneath a gaudy facade of violence and miscreant behavior. This is personified by the character of Juan Miranda, an illiterate bandit who likes to pass himself off as a meek peasant, but is quite cunning at his craft and, in his own brutish way, has a better grasp on human nature than his learned would-be betters.

"Duck," set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20, was the Italian master's final Spaghetti Western and his second-to-last directorial effort. He lay fallow for 13 years before making his final picture, 1984's "Once Upon a Time in America." This served as a bookend for "Once Upon a Time in the West" from 1968.

This movie is usually slotted as the middle picture between those two, and indeed an alternate title sometimes used is "Once Upon a Time... the Revolution." Frequent collaborator Sergio Donati pitched the story to Leone while he was still filming "West." Certainly there is some thematic continuity between the two that is a bit forced when applied to "America."

But "Duck, You Sucker" also hearkens back to Leone's early Westerns, and the film was largely issued under the title "A Fistful of Dynamite" to better evoke memories of the Clint Eastwood hit. Juan's character is essentially an extension of Tuco from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" -- a sniveling thief with (deeply) hidden reservoirs of nobility.

Eli Wallach, who played Tuco, was hired for the Juan role but the studio decided he wasn't a big enough name. Wallach, who'd dropped out of another part to play for Leone, ended up suing him.

Juan is played by Rod Steiger, who's about as Mexican as I am (or Wallach, for that matter). But the character actor of German, Scottish and French stock was a classic screen chameleon who played all sorts of nationalities and creeds throughout his long and illustrious career, from European Jew to Italian-American mobster to Deep South bigot. So his casting is not as disagreeable as it might seem at first to modern sensibilities.

Besides, Leone's Spaghettis were marked by a flippant tossing aside of national boundaries, shooting stories set in the Americas on locations in Spain using largely Italian casts and crews, with actors speaking their own native language on-camera with dubbing taking over as needed.

James Coburn plays Juan's counterpart, John Mallory, an Irish IRA revolutionary on the lam after some explosive troubles back home. John is an expert in dynamite, nitroglycerin and pretty much anything else volatile. He himself presents a serene, nonchalant exterior, in contrast to the little baubles he whips up to blow up anything bothersome to him.

Their first meeting takes place about 20 minutes into the movie, after Juan has robbed a stagecoach of spoiled rich folks. Juan employs a gang comprised of his six sons, ranging in age from about 8 to 18, all by different mothers, along with his aged father and an indeterminate gaggle of add-on banditos.

Juan has used his ruse of the dumb, barefoot peon to beg entry to the coach, where he is continually insulted and his kind compared to loathsome beasts. Leone swoops his camera in for an uncomfortable series of extreme close-ups as the people gnash their food while letting loose a barrage of unpleasantries.

He gets his revenge by taking them for literally everything they've got, setting the men to march bare-assed up the road, as well as the (implied) rape of a snooty woman.

Having commandeered the elaborate coach for his roaming home base, Juan and his gang are bewildered when John comes motoring by on his bike, ignoring their threat as if it weren't there. Juan puts a bullet into the motorcycle to stop him, and John responds by coolly sauntering up and blowing a hole in the roof of Juan's royal carriage.

Juan is convinced not to plug the upstart Irishman because he's festooned from stem to stern with explosives, along with John's warning that the resulting boom would be big enough "they'll have to change the maps." After a little more back-and-forth, the thief hatches a plan to enlist the wayward bombardier, who's come to Mexico to work in the mines of a silver oligarch, to help him knock over the bank in Mesa Verde.

Mesa Verde...

The very words evoke a hallucinogenic vision in Juan's mind somewhere between glory and salvation. Everything from the gates to the spittoons are made of gold, he promises. The vault is spilling over with money. Never mind that he's recalling a boyhood visit decades ago. You make the holes, Juan promises, and I'll fetch the money to split 50-50.

Noting the continuity of their names, he offers to dub their new gang "Johnny & Johnny." Maybe they'll even take their act north to the United States afterwards, mi amigo, where every little town has a ripe bank, Juan coos agreeably.

It's a fake brotherhood that eventually develops into a real one, as two men with nothing left to lose become unwitting heroes in the Revolution. Turns out the bank in Mesa Verde is housing nothing other than political prisoners these days. John knew this, having hooked up with the head honcho of the local insurgents, a physician named Villega (Romolo Valli).

With Juan tricked into heroism, the two debate the merits of the revolution. John is the sort who needs a cause to fight for, while Juan demands to know what the endeavor will gain for himself, and by extension the common man. The book-readers whip the peasantry to take up arms against injustice, he says, but after all the blood is spilled their lot never changes. They've just exchanged one set of overlords for another. He'd rather just grab the loot and go.

"What about me?" is Juan's repeated lament. At first comic, it takes a poignant turn when the "uniforms" slaughter his entire family.

John has his own history of loss and woe, as shown in flashbacks to his days in Ireland. Shot in gauzy slow motion, they depict a young John romancing a beautiful lass with a best friend joining in their revelry. Later this friend betrays him to the British, and John guns down both police and informer. David Warbeck plays this role, outfitted with a large prosthetic mole on his forehead, both to make him physically distinctive and provide a target for John's avenging bullet.

This experience is replicated when Dr. Villega is captured by the uniforms and tortured to identify revolutionaries before the firing squad. John eventually confronts Villega about his betrayal, but declines to judge him, even proclaiming him a "grand hero of the revolution" with his dying gasp.

Disillusion may be John's bread and butter, but he recognizes the importance symbols hold for others. He'd rather not make Juan drink from his own bitter cup. Let the good doctor, who sacrificed himself aboard a locomotive loaded with John's dynamite, die with grace.

"Duck, You Sucker" contains some of Leone's most ambitious camera work, including a crane shot of a mass shooting of political prisoners that deserves an iconic place in his filmography -- lines of soldiers firing down into long, deep pits of dying men, who scramble like ants set on fire by a lonely boy exploring his capacity for malevolence.

I also loved how he framed little throwaway scenes, such as Juan bidding good-bye to his sons as he and John prepare for a seemingly futile two-man assault on a column of army soldiers. As Juan embraces the boys, Dr. Villega watches on serenely while John loads a machine gun with a belt of bullets.

Any competent director can compose a great shot for the big "wow" moments in a movie. I love it when a filmmaker sneaks in elegant mise en scene when we're not looking.

As always, the great Ennio Morricone provides the score, and it's a testament to his prodigious creativity that the man never seemed to repeat himself after 500+ soundtracks. It's a combination of orchestral instruments, tinny sound effects and post-verbal singing ("shom, shom" is as close to formal language as the lyrics get).

I'm always astounded how Morricone can slalom from silliness to violent tension to grandiosity, often within the space of a few bars of melody.

It's probably the most non-political film ever made about a revolution, casting all sides of the Mexican conflict as amoral and power-hungry. It's the sort of film an angry young man makes as he transitions into middle age, and Leone, then in his early 40s, clearly evokes a sense of pointlessness that was bound to be interpreted as counterrevolutionary.

Unsurprisingly, the film was banned in Mexico until 1979.

There isn't even really a bonafide villain, though Colonel Reza (Antoine Saint-John) comes closest, an Army officer who hunts the pair after they double-handedly destroy his entire command. (John rigs a bridge with explosives, then he and Juan use machine gun fire to drive the soldiers underneath it for cover, than kaboom.)

Reza has a very Nazi SS look and feel to him (despite being played by a Frenchman), another example of Leone deliberately mixing up nationalities and political causes to suit his cinematic aesthetic.

A failure at the time of its release, "Duck, You Sucker!" has since been rediscovered by audiences and critics -- including this one -- as one of Leone's best films.

Reeling Backward: "The Harder They Fall" (1956)

The career of Humphrey Bogart has become so iconic that we forget his tenure as a leading man was actually rather brief. After kicking around Hollywood for a decade in supporting roles as dandy boys and gangsters, he hit it big in 1941 with "High Sierra" and "The Maltese Falcon." The end would come just 15 years later, with his star power and health both fading rapidly.

"The Harder They Fall," Bogie's last movie, was a typically hard-bitten role in a sports drama that was distinctively more pessimistic than most films of the time. It essentially postulates that boxing is rife with corruption from top to bottom, with greedy managers, gamblers and promoters vacuuming up all the cash and the fighters bought off cheaply, their latter years filled with pain and woe.

Bogart himself was already suffering from what would later be diagnosed as esophageal cancer. His raspy voice had lost some of its power -- reportedly a portion of his lines had to be dubbed by another actor in post-production. His face looks lean and droopy, but not all that much changed from his "Casablanca" days.

Bogart's lack of physical beauty is part of what defined him as a star; his hangdog looks were in stark contrast to the Errols and Carys of the day. I think it also helped him invest his roles with a brooding sort of charisma, since he knew he couldn't skate by on a twinkle in his eye and a cleft in his chin.

The film is directed by Mark Robson from a screenplay by Philip Yordan, based on a novel by Budd Schulberg. Both the book and movie were seen as thinly-disguised takes on the scandal of Primo Carnera, a great Italian lummox of a fighter who nonetheless managed to capture the heavyweight crown from 1933 to 1934. It was widely believed the Mob greased his rise, and that many of his fights were fixed.

Here the exotic import is Toro Moreno, a young Argentine strongman who lacks even a lick of actual boxing skill. In his first sparring match with a brokedown old trainer (Jersey Joe Walcott), Toro is revealed to have weak punch and a jaw of glass. 

Nonetheless, crooked promoter Nick Benko (Rod Steiger) wants to build him up big so he can cash in when the South American giant finally falls, betting against his own fighter. To accomplish this he recruits Eddie Willis, a washed-up former sports columnist played by Bogart. He becomes the press agent and Svengali to Toro, using his media connections to get favorable coverage and tamp down any complaints about opponents taking a dive.

The scenes between Steiger and Bogie are a study in stark contrast, with Steiger going way over the top and Bogart underplaying coolly.  Some have supposed the actors, who did not get along, did this to show their distaste for each other. But it actually helps the movie, with the volatile Nick seemingly ready to erupt any minute while Eddie stares him down.

At first Eddie rationalizes getting caught up in such a dirty racket, reasoning that since all the fighters facing Toro have been paid to take a dive, no one will get hurt. He even strong-arms the other players in this rotten game to get a better payout for the boxers. 

Still, his heart goes out to the simple-minded Toro, who only wants to go home and is prevented from doing so by Nick's hoodlums. They soon dispatch Toro's Argentine manager back home, played by Carlos Montalbán, older brother to Ricardo.

The travel and dark arts put a strain on Eddie's relationship with his wife, Beth (Jan Sterling). There's even a brief scene where they're talking on the phone and a woman's hand comes in from off-screen to cut off the connection, implying he's philandering. Overall, though, the inclusion of her character just mucks up the works, a brazen effort to introduce some feminine appeal into a very Y-chromosome undertaking.

Eventually Toro must face the champ, who isn't about to take any dives and indeed vows to give Toro the beating of his life. He's played by real-life boxer Max Bauer, who in a bit of Hollywood inbreeding, actually starred with Primo Carnera in a movie 23 years earlier.

Eddie must reluctantly clue Toro into the fact that he's a paper tiger who stands no chance. He tries to convince the big dolt to fight defensively and go down at the first solid punch, but the Argentine's pride prevails and he tries to make a go of it -- actually landing a few good knocks on the champ before getting cut to pieces.

Eddie is disgusted but still willing to take his cut of the scam, until he learns that through Nick's criminal accounting Toro will only keep $49.07 of all his winnings. Worse, Nick sells the rights to Toro to an even seedier promoter for $75,000, planning to take him around the country as a laughingstock act. He reasons that people paid to watch him on the way up, so they'll pay to watch him on the way down.

Fed up, Eddie sticks Toro on a plane back to Buenos Aires with his own cut of the pie, $26,000, stuffed into the lug's coat pocket. He then defies Nick's threats of violence and sits down at his typewriter to begin writing an expose on the sins of the boxing world.

One of the film's big problems is the interaction between Bogart and Mike Lane, the 6-foot-8 wrestler hired to play Toro. Lane simply can't act his way out of a paper bag, and juxtaposed with a master of subtlety like Bogart, it makes for a bunch of clunky scenes.

The boxing scenes are staged quite well -- though it's somewhat easier since Toro is supposed to be an incapable puncher. Burnett Guffey scored an Oscar nomination for the film's moody black-and-white photography.

"The Harder They Fall" ends up being a serviceable final star vehicle for Bogart, showcasing his unique power as a movie star. Like John Wayne, Bette Davis and a few others, they broke the mold when they made Bogart.

Reeling Backward: "Lion of the Desert" (1981)

So here is a curious thing: an almost three-hour epic starring a lot of big-name Western actors, set against the backdrop of a looming World War as it played out in the wind-blown dunes of North Africa. "Lion of the Desert" is a big-budget spectacle with massive action scenes and a sprawling story.

The similarities to "Lawrence of Arabia" are hard to ignore, and indeed Anthony Quinn is the star and Maurice Jarre supplied the lyrical musical score.

So why have few people even heard of it? Mainly because this historical biopic was shot in Libya and financed by dictator Muammar Gaddafi. It's essentially a love poem to Omar Mukhtar, an early Libyan freedom fighter, who waged guerrilla warfare on the Italians for 22 years before being captured and hanged in 1931. A lot of military history was made during the conflict, including the first use of tanks in the desert -- presaging Rommel's deployment of the metal beasts later on.

The film is rather uneven, directed by Syrian filmmaker Moustapha Akkad, best known for producing the early "Halloween" films. The battle scenes seem to go on and on, lacking a great deal of visceral impact. The quieter scenes with Mukhtar imparting his wisdom to younger men and children hold the movie's true power.

Mukhtar was a simple Islamic teacher who nevertheless had a brilliant mind for military tactics. He fought the Italians until well into his 70s, and Quinn expresses the grace and intelligence of the man in an understated, subtle performance.

Perhaps the film's high point is when some of his fellow Bedouins express a desire to wreak the same sort of vengeance upon the Italians as they have done to their people, including the wanton murder of women and children. "They are not our teachers," Mukhtar intones quietly, yet with iron behind his words.

Perhaps the most revelatory thing about this movie for me was the atrocities committed by the Italians in Libya, which was their colony for much of the early part of the 20th century. Even though they were part of the Axis, we tend to think of the Italians as the least bad part of an evil triad. So to see Italian soldiers gunning down kids and such is quite a thing.

Oliver Reed plays General Rodolfo Graziani, sent by Mussolini himself to quiet the rebellion in Africa. Reed is delicious as a dedicated officer who relishes defeating his enemies, but he does so out of a sense of reaching for military glory rather than malevolence.

(Incidentally, Steiger has two powerful scenes as Mussolini. Despite a total lack of physical resemblance, he captures the man's bombasity and flamboyance. He truly believed he was raising the ancient Roman Empire back to its former heights.)

The story plays out as essentially a cat-and-mouse game between the two men, with Graziani resorting to ever more extreme measures to overcome the stubborn resistance led by Mukhtar. The latter foils his foe again and again, until his time runs out.

John Gielgud has a small part as El Gariani, an Arab turncoat and old friend of Mukhtar's, who tries unsuccessfully to persuade him to accept peace. It's part of an unfortunate trend in the film for Arabs to be played by Europeans.

Quinn of course was a naturalized American of Mexican and Irish descent. Greek actress Irene Papas plays a distraught mother who watches her children die by turns. Scotsman Andrew Keir plays the palest Bedouin who ever lived.

 Raf Vallone has a meaty role as an Italian colonel who seeks to make piece with Mukhtar, but is used as a pawn by Graziani. He plays one of just a handful of sympathetic Italians in the film, who bear witness to their countrymen's barbarism and speak out against it.

"Lion of the Desert" is more interesting as a cinematic artifact than the actual movie itself. But it's engaging enough and shines a light on an important historical figure few people west of Casablanca have heard about.

Reeling Backward: "The Pawnbroker" (1965)

Sol Nazerman, the feckless proprietor of a Harlem pawn shop, offers two dollars for an old radio.

It's probably not worth even that, since the jittery junkie looking to pawn it for a quick fix can't get it to tune a single station. As Nazerman is filling out the receipt, the customer, veritably vibrating with the shakes of withdrawal, screams at him about the low offer, calling him a "bloodthirsty kike."

Nazerman, who bears a crooked tattoo of numbers on his left forearm courtesy of the Nazis, does not even look up. "Do you still live at the same address?" he asks neutrally.

The man nods, takes his two bucks and dashes out of the shop, no doubt headed straight for his dealer.

This is the world of "The Pawnbroker," an unheralded but seminal 1965 film that launched the career of Rod Steiger, helped put a nail in the coffin of the gasping Production Code, and opened a floodgate of movies about the Holocaust and its lingering effects on millions.

Nazerman, whom everyone in the colorful neighborhood calls "uncle," is a man who sees no profit in human connections. He lives with his sister and her family on Long Island, making the long commute each day to Manhattan's low-rent north side. He has a girlfriend, if you can call it that, where he eats his dinner and endures the constant berating of her father, a fellow survivor who recognizes that Nazerman has nothing left inside him.

The woman, Tessie, is the widow of a friend killed while trying to scale the concentration camp fence. She is there to provide meals and sex, which Nazerman consumes without appetite, simply fulfilling his basic human impulses.

His shop is a labyrinth of cages and bars, ostensibly to keep the customers out, but one senses Nazerman desires the security of this self-imposed prison. The only employee is Jesus Ortiz (Jaime Sanchez), a small-time crook trying to go straight, who's smart and exuberant and wants to soak up all the knowledge he can from Nazerman so he can open his own business one day.

Nazerman treats Ortiz with disdain, lumping him in with all the "rejects and scum" on the streets outside the shop. This sends the young man, angry at being dismissed by his idol, running into the arms of a local hood, who wants to knock over the pawnbroker for his fat safe.

The safe is full because of Nazerman's dealings with Rodriguez (a chilling Brock Peters), the local crime lord who uses the pawnbroker to launder money. This appears to be the only actual source of income for the shop; Nazerman's clientele is a never-ending string of down-on-their-luck neighborhood denizens, looking to pawn this or that bit of scrap for a few dollars. Nobody ever buys.

This motley cast of characters is sad and funny and diverse. There's an elderly man who likes to come in and ramble about the classics. A man trades in an oratory prize he won as a youth for a few bucks. The hoods bring an obviously hot lawn mower, and after delivering barely-veiled threats, are paid off with $30.

One day a woman about Nazerman's age, Marilyn (Geraldine Fitzgerald) wanders in representing a youth center, looking for a donation and, even more urgently, a human connection. Her overtures of friendship escalate, to the point that Nazerman rudely tells her to stay out of his life.

One of the great ironies director Sidney Lumet employs is to depict every location other than Harlem -- the Long Island suburbs, the high-rise apartments of Manhattan -- as cold, anti-septic and impersonal. It's only the ghetto, with the urban decay and human depravity, that seems vibrant and alive.

The film is also notable for its inclusion of nudity and fairly blatant (for its time) sex scenes. The Production Code prohibited such things, but the movie was granted a special exception because of the weight of its topic. (A prostitute bares her breasts to Nazerman to entice him into giving her more money for a gold locket, which causes him to flash back to seeing his wife used as a whore by the German soldiers.)

Steiger underplays for most of the film, but as Nazerman approaches a breakdown of his carefully built-up defense mechanisms, the man seems to literally implode before our eyes. Steiger had been around for years as a solid supporting player, but this role earned him an Oscar nomination and made him a reputable leading man.

Lumet, working from a screenplay by David Friedkin and Morton S. Fine based on Edward Lewis Wallant's novel, was the first major filmmaker to tackle the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of one of the Jewish survivors. He uses hyper-fast editing, sometimes just two or three frames at a time, to show how what Nazerman sees in everyday life evokes the horror he witnessed.

An idyllic opening shows a young Nazerman, his wife and young children enjoying a picnic in a field, only to see them taken away by the Nazis. "I lost everything I loved that day, but I didn't die," he says. His physical existence goes on, but his soul suffered a fatal blow.

"The Pawnbroker" is the story of a man who became a prisoner on the day of his liberation from a concentration camp.

3.5 stars out of four