Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

DIRECTOR(S): Sidney Lumet SCREENPLAY: Frank Pierson CAST: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon, Sully Boyar, Penelope Allen, James Broderick, Carol Kane, Sandra Kazan

Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon begins fittingly--through establishing shots of a hot afternoon in New York city as Elton John's early "Amoreena" plays in the in the background. The camera, eye-like, is always relatively still and measured in these shots; nothing is over the top nor showy, no aesthetic furnishes nor surprises--just New York city. Even in the opening sequence, Lumet makes it clear that Dog Day Afternoon is nothing if not a New York movie, and, like his 1973 Serpico, everything that occurs in the film would be nothing were it not for the ambiance that lies around the story of two crooks (the very young Al Pacino and John Cazale) whose bank robbery goes awry.

Unlike Serpico, though, Lumet's film possesses a much more intimate ambiance. Even from the beginning of the film, after the film's establishing opening sequence, when Sonny and Sal begin robbing a bank, there's a detectable matching of character and setting: although characterization, as always in Lumet's films, arises progressively and surprisingly as the film moves along, it's not hard to tell that these are two New Yorkers, attitude included. The people they rob, though, are New Yorkers too, and both the film's brilliant intricacy and hilariousness arise out of circumstances that would not exist in any other city. (Vincent Canby, in his 1975 review, is right to point out that "Mr. Lumet's New York movies are as much aspects of the city's life as they are stories of the city's life.")

Like Taxi Driver, the brilliance in Lumet's film is not in the standard cops-and-robbers tale it presents--it's in its setting and characterization. The brilliant moments in the film occur as a result of a straightforward plot set-up: take Charles Durning's negotiator, for instance, who is hilarious because of his incompetence; or how both Sonny and Sal realize their plan to escape is nothing if not naive; or, how most of all, crowds of people stand outside the bank cheering every time Sonny comes out to negotiate. Moments like these shape the film's amazing finale: that a film like this could never leave New York.