sidney lumet search and destroy etc

gabbneb otm here re: network

it's no longer a mildly hysterical vision of the future but a mildly satiric description of the present

anyone else looking forward to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead?

I like Network more than Eric, but I enjoy it as opera, not realistic cinema. (My favorite William Holden performance too).

I wouldn't want realism in a film like that because the depressingness would make me unable to finish it, if I could even start watching it.

Kael's quote about Treat Williams is exactly why I'm excited to see Prince Of The City. Oh, sweet, sweet irony.

I enjoy it as opera, not realistic cinema

agreed

Williams doesn't even give a fun, juicy bad performance -- no "THIS IS A BIG TITTED HIT!" Duvall-style hoohah here.

the way the last few scenes in 'prince of the city' play out is great. that last line richard foronjy gives him before the elevator closes, i can't tell what's more despairing: if he's lying or telling the truth.

i also wonder if the opening shot is intended as taking place before or after the events in the film?

orbach is awesome, love the deliberate wipe-off of his hand during the last conversation between him and TW.

yeah, but did you like the MOVIE?

i call them "films", alfred

The key to understanding this movie is to realize that William Holden is playing an older version of his character in Sabrina.

Not that I like either one of those movies.

assorted local-pro thoughts re NYC retro:

http://www.thereeler.com/features/tell_me_about_sidney.php

and, you knew it'd be here:

http://www.nypress.com/21/6/news&columns/feature1.cfm

Lumet did not make the quintessential New York movies. These would be My Man Godfrey, A Man’s Castle, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Gentleman’s Agreement, On the Corner, The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3, Annie Hall, Do the Right Thing—films about the struggles of the working class and the ethos of ethnic strivers. Instead, the films that make his reputation are the ones that herald the skullduggery of the city’s movers-and-wreckers; that is, the power fantasies of New York’s media elite. Media wonks like to pretend blue-collar virtue while enjoying the benefits of white-collar luxe—but without showing intellectual pretense. Lumet gets celebrated for making New York magazine or Daily News movies; these aren’t snotty New Yorker magazine movies but a modish version of blue-collar pulp. To have influenced David Chase or George Clooney is nothing to be proud of.

the pawnbroker (sidney lumet, 1965)

Another thread I missed entirely. I am surprised to find it full of hate for Network. I like Eric H's observation that it works as opera... it works very much like that, actually. Everything in it is WAY over the top, unapologetically. See the scene with the spurned wife, who is never heard from before that or after. Or Ned Beatty's completely awesome "corporate cosmology" speech. Or... any of it, really. It's one of my favorite movies, despite the fact that I know it's a bit of a mess.

The wife appears in the scene where Max and family is at home and everyone screams out the window.

The back of her head.

And also, almost every performance in it is great. Holden is crusty but benign. Dunaway plays hysterical as well as Gene Wilder, except cold as a media executive's tit. Robert Duvall is what you might call a "screamer." ("WE'VE GOT A BIG FAT BIG-TITTED HIT!") The whole thing is hilarious.

You guys hate this movie? Really?

It is one of my very favorite movies, actually. I don't think it's messy at all. Compared to something like Weekend, which does feel a bit messy, or some other films that I like a lot from the late 60s/70s that are messier and more chaotic. Network feels very controlled to me.

The romance side plot doesn't work at all. Holden getting involved with Dunaway makes zero sense.

Also, there is a painful amount of expositional dialogue.

"I took this job with your personal assurance that you would back my autonomy against any encroachment. But ever since CCA acquired control of UBS ten months ago..."

The romance side plot doesn't work at all. Holden getting involved with Dunaway makes zero sense.

Eh, it makes perfect sense to me - she's young and hot, and he's a guy.

honestly, it strikes me like the early television plays that owe a lot to the theater, which is the writer's background, right?

xp He's old and hot, you forgot to mention.

so what about it doesn't make sense to you?

She's completely insane, and he's not.

Also, you have to admit, radio play or not, some of that dialogue is labored.

She's completely insane, and he's not.

She is also successful and flatters him immensely.

As far as the dialogue goes, I think it works in its context. Maybe if you gave examples, I'd concede that some of it is, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

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