Tag Archives: Sidney Lumet

A NOTE ON DOG DAY AFTERNOON

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I woke this morning still thinking about DOG DAY AFTERNOON. A man who has loved no other woman more than his wife, who loves his two children, and his mother, yet who robs a bank so that –to use the film’s own language — his other wife, a man named Leon, a man he’s loved like no man has ever loved another, can have a sex-change operation, is constantly crushed by all the obligations he feels towards those he loves ‘I’m dying here!’…and fails. That is the premise of the film, a courageous one. That man, Sonny (AlPacino) is not only the protagonist of the film, but its hero. The film’s achievement is to get the audience to empathise with that man, which it succeeded in doing then — the film was a big hit – and it still works today. It’s a New York film. To much of America, probably a story that could only take place in New York. But I see New York itself as a protagonist in the film. The helicopter shots that begin it, the buildings, the people, the talk, the attitude, the energy, the humour, the grit. There are actors that I still can’t name but recognise from TV as New York actors (Carol Kane, in a small early role, is one I can). The performances of John Cazale and Chris Sarandon are justly praised. But I’d forgotten that Charles Durning, James Broderick, and Lance Hernriksen are also in the cast and excellent. Lumet is justly celebrated for his work with actors and each of the kidnapped secretaries is rendered an individuals, often with bits of business. But here Lumet also uses a mobile camera to bring energy and urgency to the heist. He uses the inside and outside symbolically, bringing in the crowds as commentary on America and the media. People remember ‘Attica’ and the gay rights moment. I at least had forgotten the can-throwing and the bile directed at Sonny. It’s a truly great film, and Pacino as the man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, doing wrong so that he can do right by everyone is tender, sweet, brave, angry, violent, caring, funny and ultimately very moving. The whole gamut. One of the greatest performances in American film history and a truly great film.

José Arroyo

Ritrovato Lockdown 2020 – Day Seven

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The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

A discussion of the seventh and last day of Ritrovato’s digital programming in full: Imperfect Crimes, To Kill a Child/ Att döda ett barn (Gösta Werner, 1953), Aimé Césaire – Le masque des mots (Sarah Maldoror, 1987), Mia madre – Giuditta Rissone (Anna Masecchia/ Michela Zegna, 2020), Ich War Neunzehn/ I was Nineteen (Konrad Wolf, 1968), Sepa, nuestro señor de los Milagros/ Sepa, Our Lord of Miracles (Walter Saxer, 1987) and, last but not least, Fail Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964).
We end the podcast with a discussion of the pros and cons of the digital experience of this year’s Ritrovato. We offer thanks and appreciation to the Ritrovato team for succeeding in putting on the festival in traditional form in Bologna itself, but also for taking the trouble to provide this digital offering for those of us who COVID prevented from going to Bologna as planned. A massive thanks. It was greatly appreciated.

The podcast can be listened to below:

Frinds of Ritrovato might also welcome seeing this goodbye from the festival itself:

David Cairns does a good summary of both’ Imperfect Crimes ‘compilations , which we don´t  really cover them in detail and you can access it here:

 

Friends might also be interested in this image capture from:

Images from Mia madre — Giuditta Rissone

Ich War Neunzhen

Sepa

Fail Safe

Friends might also be interested in this trailer for the Clooney version of Fail Safe:

José Arroyo

 

TRIO – The Intimate Friendship of Oona Chaplin, Carol Matthau and Gloria Vanderbilt by Aram Saroyan

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An enchanting book about the lifelong friendship of three fascinating women who met as tweens. Oona was the daughter of Eugene O´Neill and married Chaplin whilst barely legal. Gloria Vanderbilt was the famous ´Poor Little Rich Girl´of 1930s tabloids. She married a gangster agent at the age of 17, quickly divorced, married Stokowski when he was in his 60s, then married Sidney Lumet, before divorcing him and founding the jean empire that made her another fortune. She´s also famous as the mother of Anderson Cooper. Carol also married an older man, William Saroyan. Kenneth Anger was so smitten by her he chased her across Spain and America and their letters are so striking they´ve been published. Some say Capote´s Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany´s is based on her. After twice divorcing Saroyan, Carol married Walter Matthau in the 50s, and the particular spotlight that come from being the spouse of a star for the rest of Matthau´s life probably obscured her very real accomplishments as a writer. Her Among the Porcupines is particularly memorable. What´s interesting about this book is that it´s written almost like a novel by Aram Saroyan, Carol´s son. He must have had access to all the letters, notes, and people, as he captures their individual voices and writes convincingly and with authority of what they´re thinking, feeling, desiring. It´s a beautifully written book and an absorbing read, Going very cheap on amazon.

José Arroyo

James Mason and Simone Signoret in Deadly Affair

 

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The Deadly Affair (1967) seemed such an enticing project: Sidney Lumet early in his career directing an adaptation of a John Le Carré novel; the great Freddie Young as cinematographer; a Quincy Jones score with Astrud Gilberto singing the theme tune; and of course a cast that includes James Mason, Simone Signoret, Lynn Redgrave and Corin Redgrave — both then very young; and the latter painfully thin — Robert Flemyng, Roy Kinnear, even the RSC performing bits of Edward II. But though I started watching the film, I lost interest and eventually ended up only glancing every so often. What kept me from turning it off was James Mason’s transcendental evocation of sadness and defeat, which I loved so much that I made a gif of it which you can see above; and Simone Signoret, evoking the anger and resilience of a woman from the middle of the last century who’s seen the worst, which you can see excerpted below. Sometimes, too often, actors are the only reason to see movies.

José Arroyo

Michael Lyndsay-Hogg, Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond

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Michael Lindsay-Hogg was the son of Geraldine Fitzgerald and…who? That’s the overall arch of the book. Was it Orson Welles or a Sir Edward Lyndsey-Hogg, a minor British aristocrat? Whilst the answer to the question takes several turns in the book, we also hear about his directing ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’, some of the early key concert movies like ‘Let it Be’, a pioneer of the MTV video clip (most of the early Rolling Stones videos), a director of Brideshead Revisited on TV and The Normal Heart off-Broadway.

It’s a lovely book; a not very distinguished career in cinema, but with landmark work in tv and theatre; and then of course through his mother — who most of us probably now remember for her work with Bette Davis in Dark Victory or as Isabelle Linton in Wyler’s Wuthering Heights — he knew all the greats of the classic era (Welles himself but Marion Davies, Hearst, right up to Lumet, Gloria Vanderbilt) then on his own (the Beatles, the Stones, everyone in music really) right up to turning Larry Kramer’s A Normal Heart into a hit in the 80s at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Wonderfully atmospheric descriptions of Hollywood in the 40s, Dublin in the 50s, post-war New York, Swinging London etc.

The book’s conclusion about paternity has been disproved in Patrick McGilligan’s Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane, but Lynsay-Hogg’s views on so much of the landmark work he helped create on film and in the theatre makes for an insightful and entertaining read: and the book is also an interesting exploration of the lure of celebrity as social currency that each of the protagonists deploys to advantage: would paternity have been such a question if the father were rumoured to be Joe Blow instead of Orson Welles?

 

José Arroyo

EAVESDROPPING AT THE MOVIES – MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974)

 

 

Mike hadn’t seen Sidney Lumet’s classic version of Murder on the Orient Express so we saw it together and basically compare the two but keep the focus on the original.  We discuss which performances we prefer in each version, what we make of the differences in style and tone between the film, which film was better directed and who was the better Poirot? We also ask whether  the action sequences in the new film were quite necessary. We don’t agree but Mike mounts a good defence.

 

José Arroyo and  Michael Glass of Writing About Film