sidney lumet search and destroy etc

and amateurist otm re: misogyny (which hardly prompts an automatic veto on movies from me)(i luv altman, hitchcock, master p)

I haven't seen it in years, but I remember really enjoying 'Prince of the City' as well - a twisting crime thriller stuffed with great character actors

murder on the orient express owes what it gots to albert finney with maaaybe a nod in the direction of the nine million other stars in that thing. if that thing works it's despite lumet.

x-post

sidney lumet filmed a movie in my aunt's old apartment, apparently he was really nice.

D: that Melanie Griffith Nazi one, that Gloria remake

The Hill - mesmerised me first time I saw it. Still does.
Fail Safe - ditto
Running on Empty - made me cwy
Dog Day Afternoon - What's not to like? Awful inevitability of John Cazale's death
Serpico - saw it this week and still loiked it. Very watchable.

I've not yet seen 12 Angry men...

god the original is so weird, it's like the most 'impossible' movie i've ever sat through

dude jess they showed you network in film school? i think i will have to pray now

I think the whole movie is arguably seen through the Holden character's eyes, even if he isn't present, which may explain the perspective.

It's interesting because he started in TV in the early days. It made him less an "auteur" than a craftsman who is interested in finding the best techiques to convey the film's themes. So he has great knowledge of things like lenses... they mean a lot.

He's also really tuned in to how those techniques work on the subconscious - like in 12 Angry Men (search) how the shots keep getting tighter and tighter so it feels like the ceiling is caving in on the actors. I mean, the whole movie was shot in one room!

Most of his movies from the 80s on are pretty crapola though.

amst could you explain what you mean by this?

this is one of the more readable film threads in a while.

wow, this is just brilliant

roll over robert bresson

-- amateur!st (amateur!s...), February 27th, 2004. (later)

Seeing as how he made it in 1957 in the US studio system, yes, it's pretty noteworthy. I never said the guy was the greatest filmmaker alive for fuck's sake though. Just chiming in.

no all i'm saying is that that's a basic filmmaking technique that people used in the 1910s and onward, it's a nice technique and i'm sure there are some who are oblivious to it, but it doesn't really reveal any sort of creative genius on the part of lumet

Judi Dench should pop up as Queen Victoria again in something to break the record

I know it has its heavy-handed, method-actory moments--Newman's final summation probably the worst offender--but The Verdict rarely gets mentioned here, and I love it. James Mason and Jack Warden are excellent.

i wonder if Mamet visited the set much

My two favorite scenes: Miles O'Shea slurping on clam chowder in the judge's chambers wheedling Paul Newman as a silent tea-sipping James Mason watches (Mason offers to say something, thinks better of it, patronizingly slinks away); and Mason rehearsing the strategy with the young law partners.

Least favorites: any scene with Charlotte Rampling. Her section comes in as from another movie. I get the sense Lumet and Mamet got cold feet about all the dudes and stuck in a female character out of melodrama.

I love where Mason scolds all his young lawyers that they aren't to make even the slightest mention that Newman's replacement star witness is black--after one of them smugly informed the room that "Oh--and he's black"--and then, in the next breath, says something like "and make sure we get a black lawyer sitting at our table" with a big conspiratorial grin.

(Which is probably the scene you refer to.)

yep!

It's based on a bestseller, and i have verified that the Rampling character is in the novel.

Quite a tussle over who would make the film in fact:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Verdict#Production

I think Rampling tries, gamely, but the character isn't even granted one light moment--she's reduced to a scold at first (her big "I can't invest in failure" speech), then an informant, then humiliated.

This was the second film in close proximity where Newman flat-out slugged a woman (after Absence of Malice)--I think Sarris might have called attention to that). And in both instances, I'm pretty sure the film wants you to empathize with him.

Would not fly today.

This is embarrassing enough that I shouldn't say anything, but I once put Q&A on a decade-end Top 10. God, what was I thinking? There's a post somewhere above where I tempered that, but even that was way too generous. It's probably better than Lumet's last film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, but not a high bar. I evidently didn't mind the corniest kind of cop banter when I drew up that list; even more surprised that I didn't recoil from all the show-offy, look-how-fearless-our-film-is race- and gay-baiting, which is non-stop. Lumet's daughter, Jenny, isn't much of an actress, and indeed she only did a few movies after this one; the eye-catching thing on her resume is having written the Demme film Rachel Getting Married. There was only one thing I really enjoyed this time (not Nolte), something I would have been oblivious too until now: Dominic Chianese from The Sopranos! He's got a pretty big role, and he may as well be doing Uncle June. (And now something even more embarrassing--until I looked him up, I had no idea he was Johnny Ola in GFII.)

dog day afternoon for me is a perfect film

i could watch it a hundred times & every time its like i’m watching it for the first time
like a high powered magnet that just WHOOMP pulls you all the way in and doesn’t let go

i rewatched tonight & it was 107 in sacramento today so i relate heavily to the sweat pouring off everyone like water

Rewatched that recently on the big screen and I couldn’t agree more. It’s funny, it’s intense, it’s real, every actor in it is doing their best work.

Btw I live a 10 minute walk from where it was filmed. The bank in the film is condominium apartments today. It wasn’t even really a bank in 1975. But the barber shop across the street where the cops are based is still a hair salon today.

i always wondered if it was a real bank!

I think it was like an empty warehouse space that they dressed up as a bank.

Furthermore (if anyone cares) I saw the film at a cinema located three blocks from where the film was shot (The Nitehawk Cinema in Park Slope, Brooklyn). And FURTHERmore there is a hot dog joint more or less across the street from where the “bank” was, called Dog Day Afternoon.

As I've posted before, I always find Dog Day's first half-plus to be much stronger--can't remember at what point it starts to slow down for me. If you haven't, try to see The Dog (on Kanopy, I think).

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3091304/

yeah i need to watch that, may give it a whirl tonight!

Furthermore (if anyone cares) I saw the film at a cinema located three blocks from where the film was shot (The Nitehawk Cinema in Park Slope, Brooklyn). And FURTHERmore there is a hot dog joint more or less across the street from where the “bank” was, called Dog Day Afternoon.

It really is a great movie to see in Brooklyn. (I saw it at BAM in 2009, not long after I moved into the neighborhood.)

And yes, Dog Day Afternoon is hands down my favorite Lumet film. I think his filmography can be a little all over the place, but even when the films themselves are a bit lacking, he usually gets the best out of his performers.

My other favorites:

The TV production of The Iceman Cometh - Jason Robards's performance is legendary and rightfully so. One of the best I've ever seen.

Long Day's Journey Into Night - Another O'Neill classic, both plays mean a lot to me, and they're both done so well. Again, a legendary cast and rightfully so.

Prince of the City - saw this again after Treat Williams's death, he actually did a Q&A for this movie at Metrograph several years ago. Really nice guy. A good double feature with Serpico, but as wonderful as Pacino's performance may be, I actually think Prince of the City is the better film.

The Verdict - I thought this was just okay when I first saw it in high school, but I revisited it during the pandemic and was surprised by how much more it resonated. Lumet's great theme is institutional corruption, and it's richly detailed here. It made me think of the moral dilemmas that every law graduate I know just went through - what to do with a law degree, which typically loses out to status and financial considerations - and I get the sense that those problems grew exponentially during the '80s all the way to the present day. The film came out in 1982 and you see this already taking root - it's not just Newman trying to redeem himself and win for his client, he's also fighting against a future that's already been lost, where so much of the best and the brightest aren't going to make the world a better place but cash in, pay off their student loans and move on to better material lives.

Should clarify, I don't think Dog Day Afternoon is all over the place, it's perfect the way it is.

ok i watched The Dog documentary finally and holy shit. what a…i don’t wanna say piece of shit but yeah maybe piece of shit? proof that if you tell yourself something enough you can just force it to be true.

the real hero of the documentary is Frank’s brother Tony <3

I've probably asked this before: no Lumet poll? I'm sure DDA would win, but there should be one.

I don't remember seeing Night Falls on Manhattan when it came out ('96), but I must have--can't imagine skipping it. Lumet's fifth-last film...not good at all. He's remaking Serpico for the third or fourth time. Ron Liebman, Andy Garcia, and Ian Holm each get one big hysterically overwrought speech. The Garcia-Olin romance comes out of nowhere--you look away from the screen for a minute, and suddenly they're deep into a relationship that serves no purpose whatsoever.

The only interest is seeing James Gandolfini and Dominic Chianese in the same film three years before The Sopranos. No scenes together, unfortunately.

I remember Ian Holm giving his typically great performance and Liebman just behind him. Garcia gave his typically terrible performarnce.

I remember seeing NFIM in the cinema and falling asleep. The last Lumet I saw at home was the Anderson Tapes, which I think is underrated. It’s slightly less histrionic than usual, has a satisfyingly grizzly 1970s ending, and Connery is always interesting (to me) when he stops pretending to be likeable.

Garcia should stick to animation work.

no Lumet poll?

The Wiz would be getting at least one vote

Assumed you'd be Network.

around 3-5 votes will come in for Network, only one person will fess up to voting for it (me)

https://i.giphy.com/media/11mYSZihIu0q40/giphy.webp

https://i.imgur.com/uz3HzzJ.gif

NFOM is good not bad I think but it does feel like a Lumet greatest hits. It's got nothing on Q&A, Prince of the City, or Serpico as far as his police corruption pics. I've got zero memory of Garcia in this one, but remember Holm and Gandolfini really nailing their roles.

Look, I'll put my vote behind Network if the moderator agrees to leave off Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

i just watched before the devil knows yr dead

as the film gang here are always wrong abt movies i thought i might enjoy it -- lots of ppl shouting and cursing for two hours 👍🏽 👍🏽 👍🏽 -- but boy what a dumb movie

maybe the gang knows best after all

Let that be a lesson to you

Ethan Hawke's accent is a poem.