RIP Sidney Lumet

     I realize that this is old news to those of you who keep track of current celebrity deaths, but this should be of note to those of you who are not in the know. Several weeks ago on April 9th, Sidney Lumet, director of such classic films as Dog Day Afternoon, 12 Angry Men, and Network died due to complications with lymphoma. It is amazing how great that these films are even today in the age of digitization and special effects. Although, you can do a lot with great special effects, it certainly does not make a movie.

     Look at Star Wars: A New Hope. This movie has paltry effects by our standards and yet it capitivated audiences in the seventies and continues to capitivate them today, this is not because the special effects are great (they were pretty crappy), but the story and the characters drew us in. Like Star Wars the movies of Sidney Lumet captivated audiences because of their characters.

      In Dog Day Afternoon Al Pachino plays a bungling gay bankrobber. He is not effeminate or passive as  gay characters can sometimes be depicted, but instead portrayed honestly and forthrightly with all of the intracacies(the strengths and the flaws) that make great movie characters. This shows great dedication to Konstantin Stanislavski's ideal of realistic acting and not caricaturing a gay man which could have been and might have been done by a lesser director.

     One of my favorite parts of Dog Day Afternoon is the opening sequence which depicts different parts of 1970s New York City to the soundtrack of Elton John's "Amooreena" (also a great song). This extended sequence displays New York, documentarian style, in all of its beauty and ugliness without making apparent judgements before moving onto the action. This action pits the forces of authority vs. the forces of countercultralism. This is also shown in the great Serpico, which set the police department against the individualistic and corruption averse Officer Serpico(also played by Al Pachino). This shows a dedication to realism as well as an awareness of the need for social reform, seen over and over again in Lumet's great movies.

      Lumet, to me, will go down as one of the great American directors along with Orson Welles, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, and various others who make up the cannon of American film and who have shown that there is a difference between making movies  and making movies. There are so many great and different Lumet films from the prescient Network to the mad cap Dog Day Afternoon as a movie lover and a fellow American I salute Lumet's fantastic and noble efforts for great social realism and for great storytelling.