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.

[5] 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".

He operates a pawnshop in an East Harlem slum while living in an anonymous Long Island housing tract with his sister-in-law, who is also a Holocaust survivor, and her husband.

Ortiz's girlfriend tries to pawn jewelry to help fund his plan to open a shop; she offers her body to Nazerman to make more money, but he rejects her.

The Pawnbroker tells the story of a man whose spiritual "death" in the concentration camps causes him to bury himself in the most dismal location that he can find: a slum in upper Manhattan.

According to a review on the Turner Classic Movies website, it has some similarities to two films of Alain Resnais: Night and Fog (1955) and Hiroshima mon Amour (1959).

A recent commentator observed that the film "is uniquely American, with its harsh, unforgiving depiction of New York City, all of it brought to vivid life by Boris Kaufman's black and white cinematography and a dynamic cast highlighted by Rod Steiger's searing portrayal of the title role.

"[4] New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that Sol Nazerman "is very much a person of today—a survivor of Nazi persecution who has become detached and remote in the modern world—he casts, as it were, the somber shadow of the legendary, ageless Wandering Jew.

Reisz, whose parents were murdered in the Holocaust, said that for "deep, personal" reasons he "could not objectively associate himself with any subject which has a background of concentration camps".

As a result, Landau arranged a distribution deal with the Rank Organisation, and it opened in the U.S.[4] Quincy Jones composed the soundtrack for the film, including "Soul Bossa Nova", which was used in a scene at a nightclub.

[16] The film was controversial on initial release 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 watch his wife (Geiser) and other women raped by Nazi officers.

[4][5] 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.

"[5] 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.

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".

"[13] New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called it a "remarkable picture" that was "a dark and haunting drama of a man who has reasonably eschewed a role of involvement and compassion in a brutal and bitter world and has found his life barren and rootless as a consequence.

[4][5] Rod Steiger called The Pawnbroker his favorite film, "by a long shot," in his last television interview on a 2002 episode of Dinner for Five, hosted by actor/director Jon Favreau.

In his 2008 study of films during that era, Pictures at a Revolution, author Mark Harris wrote that the MPAA's action was "the first of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years.

[5] The film score was composed, arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones, and the soundtrack album was released on the Mercury label in 1965.

[16] Allmusic's Stephen Cook noted "This soundtrack to Sidney Lumet's 1964 film The Pawnbroker might not rate with such other Quincy Jones celluloid efforts as In the Heat of the Night, but its fine mix of jazz, bossa nova, soul, and vocals still makes it one of his best.