Sidney Lumet/USA/1975; R4 (2-disc SE)
Warner Bros, NZ$19.95 | Reviewed by Jacob Powell

A BRILLIANT piece of cinema, Dog Day Afternoon finds Al Pacino at his passionate best in this “based on a true story” account of a bank heist gone astray in 1970s New York. Would-be bank robber, Sonny, enters a bank with two accomplices on a stifling New York day. Early into the stickup you get the gist that things are not going to be straightforward when one of the guys backs out after guns are pulled – and even that piece of action is as sadly amusing as it would be scary.

Turns out Sonny is a partially closeted homosexual who has orchestrated this robbery in order to raise funds for his lover’s sex-change operation. His quietly confused partner, Sal (played brilliantly by John Cazale), goes along with Sonny, all the while looking like a poorly set explosive device.

The film tracks them through the botched robbery-turned-hostage-situation, bonding with the hostages a la ‘Stockholm syndrome’, Sonny’s interaction with the police and the subsequent media circus, to its emotive conclusion at Kennedy airport. This is the kind of story that pulls you in, start to finish, and doesn’t leave you space to look at your watch.

That a major Hollywood film approached such subject matter, so long ago, in this way, is quite amazing. Director Sidney Lumet, who worked with Pacino two years earlier on cop drama Serpico, handles the material sensitively but without pulling any punches. At no time do you feel like any sequence or performance is overdone. The cops are not wonderful, evil, or idiots. Sonny and his gay ‘wife’, Leon (Chris Sarandon) are not caricatured ‘poofs’ or weirdoes. The crowd is as fickle and inflammatory as any crowd can be. Lumet manages to achieve the kind of ‘cinematic reality’ and tension that does the story, and hence the film, justice.

Dog Day Afternoon is an example of a filmmaker at the top of his game – one who knows what he wants to achieve, sets out to get it done, and comes away with the desired result.


SIDNEY LUMET states several times during his enlightening commentary that this is the first viewing of Dog Day Afternoon since its cinematic release in 1975. It is a credit to the movie, his memory, and his strong sense of connection to the medium of film that this director’s commentary track is uniformly interesting as well as informative. Not a statement that can be made regarding many film commentaries.

Lumet focuses primarily on the various technical details of shooting and staging the production and speaks with a sense of passion and authority. Clearly, methods of film production are as myriad as the styles of various directors, but Lumet has a strong sense of his own aesthetic and an awareness of the underlying reasons for decisions he makes when putting a film together.

Some of the many varied topics covered in the commentary are:

» His belief in the use of trained actors as extras,
» A simple way create realistic looking sweat in a cold environment,
» Local New York history surrounding the events which occur in the film,
» Purposefully neutral depiction of the, then revolutionary, ‘gay elements’ of the film – including using a portion of the local gay community in the crowd scenes as happened during the media circus,
» His choice to let the actors improvise somewhat, within strict bounds, and why he doesn’t usually like this method.

One major topic Lumet covers is his overall handling of the story and his guiding aesthetic principle. He explains that because the story, in many ways, is so outlandish he wanted to balance this with a sense of realism; that the events depicted actually happened. He tries to give the audience the feeling that they are watching extended newsreel footage. To this end he decided to forego a musical score altogether on the soundtrack. He used only lighting natural to the setting: fluorescent lights inside, and a big police style spotlight reflecting off a white wall for the outside night shots. Even details such as costuming where he got the ‘bank staff’ actors to bring their own clothing from home so that they looked and felt as ordinary as they could.

Whilst commenting on various aspects of this production Lumet simultaneously outlines much of his personal theory of filmmaking. This, to a great degree, is what makes this commentary an excellent alternative viewing experience.

Disc Two features a thorough 60-minute "Making of" retrospective documentary, and a 10-minute reel of behind the scenes footage of Lumet and crew at work.