One powerful fact about Richard Fleischer’s Armored Car Robbery (1950) is that it directly challenged the restrictive Hays Code by depicting the meticulous planning and execution of a heist in explicit detail—right down to the timing of engines, roadblocks, and character interactions. Despite the Code’s prohibition against showing “methods of crime” in a way that could inspire imitation, the film balances on that edge: it doesn’t glorify the criminals (they’re swiftly captured or killed), but it

✶ Shadow in Glass: On Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker (1964) There are films that shout. The Pawnbroker does something quieter, and more devastating — it remembers. Sidney Lumet’s 1964 masterpiece follows Sol Nazerman, a Holocaust survivor numbly operating a pawnshop in Harlem. Each trinket handed across the counter is a ghost. Rod Steiger plays Sol as a man whose heart has gone into hibernation. His silence is louder than any monologue. But the past won’t stay buried. Lumet pierces the present wi