sidney lumet search and destroy etc

sorry everyone but network is still a brilliant film, not flawless by any means, but still brilliant.

I guess Network is also an early example of Boomer-loathing, not in the prior sense of despising them for being bratty kids/hippies but from the perspective of seeing them as adversaries in the workplace

It loathes Boomer women, and black Boomer women especially.

As far as I remember there's just one black woman character, yes, she's easily the worst-drawn character in the film, but in no way the most unlikable, and her scenes could (and probably should) be cut with no real impact on the film as a whole.

she's easily the worst-drawn character in the film

Wellll...

but in no way the most unlikable

OK, agreed.

I think the only thing in Network that hasn't become trite and/or sentimental is the phenomenon of Beale's catchphrase becoming popular just because it's fun to scream out windows and like, knock over a trashcan. Just the total impenetrability of any kind of real message. Once they get into newsroom & media politics, it's just a joke, self-congratulatory and trite. "The media and politicians lie and corporations run the world." Whoa, stop the presses. I mean that last Ned Beatty speech... talk about bathos! Great performances though and Lumet directs brilliantly.

I didn't make it to the end this viewing, but iirc the Unspooled podcast noted that at the beginning the board meeting is all old white men, but supposedly there's a fleeting second shot of the board at the end and it now features more women and even a couple of black characters, so I think Lumet et al. were aware and maybe (for once) subtle to a fault.

The Ebert (original) review homes in on how the movie loses the focus of its satire of the news/TV and starts to take scattershot aim at all sorts of stuff:

If the whole movie had stayed with this theme, we might have had a very bitter little classic here. As it is, we have a supremely well-acted, intelligent film that tries for too much, that attacks not only television but also most of the other ills of the 1970s. We are asked to laugh at, be moved by, or get angry about such a long list of subjects: Sexism and ageism and revolutionary ripoffs and upper-middle-class anomie and capitalist exploitation and Neilsen ratings and psychics and that perennial standby, the failure to communicate. Paddy Chayefsky's script isn't a bad one, but he finally loses control of it. There's just too much he wanted to say. By the movie's end, the anchorman is obviously totally insane and is being exploited by blindly ambitious programmers on the one hand and corrupt businessmen on the other, and the scale of evil is so vast we've lost track of the human values.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/network-1976

Still a 4-star review, as is the 2000 reassessment.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-network-1976

Both are worth a (re)read.

BTW, I think Beatrice Straight still holds the record for least amount of screen time in an Academy Award winning performance. 5 minutes, 40 seconds.

If you see earlier Chayefsky-written films, particularly The Hospital, his race/gender peeves are consistent. I think Lumet was obviously more liberal, enough to make 3 (or 4?) police corruption movies where the rot can be traced to his own generation of Jewish, Italian, and Irish peers.

xp yes, though amazingly enough not the shortest nominated performance, which is hard to fathom

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.