sidney lumet search and destroy etc

I just gave one! The writing often breaks through and reveals itself as having been written. It's not exactly clumsy, because it's consistently like that, but I do cringe at certain lines.

I suppose it's the whole movie in abstract when Dunaway looks at Holden over dinner and, bug-eyed and hyperactive, asks "What sort of script do you think we can make out of this?"

xp - yeah, i have no problem with that. Granted, there are more streamlined ways of presenting the same information that make more use of the potential of the various facets of cinema to do so. I think the theatrical-style exposition in the dialog calls attention to the era of television that the movie is, in a sense, mourning.

That's definitely an angle on the movie that hadn't occurred to me.

rip

Can't say he didn't live a full life as a movie director.

RIP

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/movies/sidney-lumet-director-of-american-classics-dies-at-86.html

Huge. Love Dog Day, The Verdict, and Long Day's Journey Into Night, also Serpico and Prince of the City a little less so. (Mixed feelings on Network.) Amazing how many major directors have died during the past calendar year.

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead was a good one to go out on.

As a director, only usually as good as his material (i.e. Network's script, The Wiz's tunes). Don't know what he was like as a person.

RIP. Don't forget 12 Angry Men!

I've never watched The Iceman Cometh, which I home-taped years and years ago. I think that's #1 on my to-do list.

oh my. (particularly sad about that last crappy film.)

I would argue that his craft, esp the direction of the actors, gave Chayefsky's goddamn reactionary sermonizing a human dimension in Network.

I thought Before The Devil was terrible: lots of shouting, which was par for the course for Lumet when his Magic Gift for actors departed him. On the other hand, Night Falls on Manhattan is an underrated little film, despite Andy Garcia's misbegotten accent.

I didn't like Before the Devil either, but then I got caught up in some scene on TV one night, not even realizing it was Devil till I checked. So maybe it's worth a second look, I don't know.

Well, Lumet is the kind of non-auteurist director who is only as gd as the script he's working from - ie Frank Pierson's screenplay for DDA is really brilliant, so poignant and multilayered, while Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay for 'Network' is yes, vulgar and clumsy.
― Andrew L (Andrew L), Thursday, February 26, 2004

As a director, only usually as good as his material (i.e. Network's script, The Wiz's tunes).
― scissorlocks and the three bears (Eric H.), Saturday, April 9, 2011

Same point, seven years apart. This is the "Raising Kane" debate--isn't this more or less true of any director, though?

this is a great scene: beautifully staged, esp with the bank tellers being thrilled at being part of a media event. Too bad he didn't fuck it up with some self-regarding camera gyrations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9gHNl8UNq4&feature=related

http://historical-images.encore-editions.com/44-van-vechten-collection/500/400787-portrait-of-sidney-lumet.jpg

RIP

I forgot about Network jeez. Before The Devil knows was pretty bad, but heck, the man'd done enough great movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTDhgR3p12w

My fave shot from this

Neat trick to isolate Begley: you see Lee J. Cobb go over to the window in the first second of that clip, then the shot reverses angle and Cobb disappears for the rest of the scene. (I spent the whole clip wondering where Cobb was, and only caught him when I went back to the beginning.)

uh, did we know one of his 3 wives was Gloria Vanderbilt?

Ah man, Dog Day Afternoon is one of my all-time faves. Love Network, Serpico and 12 Angry Men as well.

86 is not a bad age, he lived his life fully it seems. RIP.

deathtrap is pretty fun

I forgot that I was an extra in one of his films -- Daniel. The scene was a socialist rally on behalf of the neo-Rosenberg characters, shot in Union Square, presided over by Ed Asner. I had a circa 1950 hat. Don't remember his direction, except it was given by megaphone.

Anyone read this?

http://lehmannfilms.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/making-movies-sidney-lumet-paperback-cover-art.jpg

Yeah, it's pretty terrific -- the best thing he did in twenty years.

BTDKYD isn't terrible but the fractured chronology kills all possible tension (see also Vantage Point)

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/3119

From that link:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/post_images/4140/lumet2.jpg?1302434653

I don't think I remember subway seats w/ fabric, but I do recall the small electric fans mounted on the car walls.

From the NYT Last Word interview, I don't remember "Wyoming" from DDA.

Wonderfully unpretentious in that video piece - must find myself a copy of Making Movies.

When I posted a list many years ago of my favorite films of the '90s, I had Q&A in a group of 10 runners-up. When I watched it again a couple of years later, some of it seemed very shrill; it didn't hold up as well as I'd remembered, although Nolte's performance mostly did.

^^^ my feeling too

Making Movies is a great book. He's such a likeable presence.

Joe Morgenstern on Lumet.

Of the many things we discussed, the oddest was dishwashers. There’s a scene in “Rachel Getting Married” in which the father of the bride has a dishwasher-loading competition with the bridegroom that seems to be about efficiency but is really about control. The scene, Jenny said, had been inspired by a similar contest she witnessed as a child between her dad and the director/choreographer Bob Fosse.

Pete Hammond's remembrance

Matt Seitz: "Just because you don't instantly notice what directors are doing doesn't mean they aren't doing anything."

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/04/09/sidney_lumet_appreciation

That's the best thing I've read so far.

Lumet on directing Brando, from the CC of The Fugitive Kind:

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1810-the-craft-of-sidney-lumet

I started his book, it's very snappy. He suggested Vanessa Redgrave for Network, and when Paddy Chayefsky yelped "no, she's pro-PLO," Lumet told him that was blacklisting. PC: "Not when a Jew does it to a Gentile."

Watched Dog Day for the first time in eons on Friday -- really amazing neorealist texture, the quintessence of '70s New York (ie, better than Mean Streets or Taxi Driver). Possibly Pacino's peak, and I didn't realize Judith Malina and Lance Henriksen had small meaty roles. The principal location is blocks from where I lived for a dozen years.

Have you ever read the LIFE Magazine article on which the screenplay was based? Some of the photos accompanying that story look almost like stills from the movie.

I have not, but will later! Also I'm amused that the real-life love object paid for his sex change with the money from the movie rights, apparently.

From his book, the ppl on the set he really had no use for were the star's personal hair/makeup staff, and the Teamsters.

Got an invite to a memorial tribute for him at Lincoln Center Monday afternoon. Can't go.

watching 'network' i think that movie sort of epitomizes everything i might hate in a movie

What happened to you as a child? This is such a great movie. I always pair it with "Hospital" (another great Chayefsky script) in my mind.

Good scripts, not movies!

sometimes I credit Lumet for ameliorating some of the hysteria in Network; other times he just said fuck it and let the camera go.

The hysteria is the best thing about the movie, that and Dunaway's premature orgasm.

Carl Paladino did sort of ruin the "mad as hell" for me though.

Is The Deadly Affair worth watching? I got ten minutes in, decided that James Mason was vastly inferior to Guinness the George Smiley role, and gave up. I should probably give it another go.