Dog Day Afternoon - 1975
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Written by Frank Pierson
Based on an article called "The Boys in the Bank" by P. F. Kluge & Thomas Moore
Starring Al Pacino, John Cazale, James Broderick, Charles Durning
Chris Sarandon, Lance Henriksen & Judith Malina
When a great actor gets on a roll, getting offered his choice of the best screenplays, getting to work with the best directors going around, and getting to work with filmmakers who have studio money backing them up, they can really string along some truly memorable performances. When the astonishing true story of
Dog Day Afternoon came along, Al Pacino thankfully took a golden opportunity to work with Sidney Lumet again - in Lumet's
Serpico, he played the real-life titular police officer who fought corruption at great personal risk to himself - under so much pressure his psyche always seemed to verge on collapsing. In fact, by the time
Dog Day Afternoon came around Pacino had already been nominated for 3 Oscars despite the fact that his acting career had only taken off three years previously. For playing Sonny in this film, Al Pacino would be nominated for a Best Acting Oscar for the fourth year in a row. Had it not been for
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, this film may very well have swept the Oscars, and Pacino may very well have had an Oscar he truly deserved. It's a remarkable performance in a remarkable film.
On a hot August afternoon in 1972, three completely inexperienced and rather nervous young men walked into a Chase Manhattan bank branch in Brooklyn armed to rob the place. Just as the robbery was commencing one member of the group, 20-year-old Bobby Westenberg (Stevie in the film, played by Gary Springer) fled. This left 27-year-old John Wojtowicz (Sonny in the film, played by Al Pacino) and 18-year-old Sal Naturale (played as a much older man in the film, by John Cazale) to face setbacks (in the film, the bank's daily pickup had departed, leaving the place with just over $1000 to take) and become lost in desperate improvisation. When Sonny burns a register after taking traveler's checks, this attracts outside attention - and soon enough the place is surrounded by the police. What followed was a bizarre, 14-hour hostage drama with Sonny negotiating with flustered Police Detective Sergeant Eugene Moretti (Charles Durning) for a bus to the airport, and a plane. Meanwhile, the general public and members of Sonny's family turned the affair into a circus, with the media joining in, letting an incredulous public in on the fact that Sonny had recently married a man by the name of Ernie Aron (Leon Shermer in the film, played by Chris Sarandon) - in fact, the whole reason for the robbery was to attain money for this man's sex-change operation.
The character of Sonny becomes Pacino's in this - and while the real-life John Wojtowicz seems a mentally off-balance sort of man in real life, Pacino gives his version more endearing traits than John really had. He's a nice guy in the film, and Lumet hit upon giving Sonny a defining characteristic of wanting to please people and wanting to be the man who sorts out problems for people. This certainly dovetails into Sonny's motive for robbing the bank - to help his "wife" Leon get that sex change operation - and it also helps foster a sense of 'Stockholm Syndrome' camaraderie amongst the hostages and hostage-takers here. Pacino turns Sonny into the de-facto hero of the film, and the man we're all taken with - he rails against the corruption and enmity that took the lives of so many innocent people during the Attica prison riots, and in the meantime looks after the bank tellers. I love the part of the film where he talks about "having to keep people happy" - whether it's the police, his family, the hostages or Sal. John Cazale's Sal is a darker character though - a middle-aged man-child with limited understanding about what it going on, and a professed readiness to kill that perturbs Sonny a little. Pacino is on fire though - he roars through this film with energy and charisma and it's his incredible talent that gives
Dog Day Afternoon it's edge.
The other performers in the film support the main star very ably, and are an interesting group. A lot of people won't know that the chief F.B.I. man is played by veteran actor James Broderick, Matthew Broderick's father. Lance Henriksen can be seen in one of his earliest roles as the other F.B.I. man. Charles Durning is great as Moretti, and brings his own energy to the movie, but the real standout amongst all the other performers is Chris Sarandon. His scenes were some of the hardest and most emotional. The other great performer is the city of New York itself, which we seem to let soak in during the opening credits - one of my all-time favourite opening-credits montages while Elton John belts out Amoreena, rhythmically grinding away at a piano while the average person on the street sweats through another day. The song is playing on the radio in a car Sonny and his two co-conspirators are sitting in, which is how it's all tied into the film's opening. All staged so perfectly, and although the film has absolutely no score or other musical accompaniment it's been given a great start by what we've seen and heard.
The screenplay earned Frank Pierson an Academy Award - sadly, it ended up being
Dog Day Afternoon's sole win at the 1976 Oscars, despite 5 other nominations. Lumet was beaten by Milos Forman in the Best Director category.
Jaws and Verna Fields took Best Editing from
Dog Day and Dede Allen. Pacino lost to Jack Nicholson as far as Best Actor went. Best Supporting Actor went to George Burns for his part in
The Sunshine Boys, meaning that Chris Sarandon sadly missed out on a deserved Oscar win.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest took Best Picture of course. Frank Pierson got his Oscar win on his third attempt, previously being nominated for 1965 film
Cat Ballou and 1967 film
Cool Hand Luke - a great pair of films. As far as the screenplay itself is concerned, it was changed a little when the film was committed to celluloid, with actors being encouraged to deliver lines in ways they'd naturally word them instead of following each line in an exact fashion. It helped to give exchanges a more naturalistic flow - and naturalism was the exact thing that Lumet was looking for here.
Director of Photography Victor J. Kemper's work translates well to indoor and outdoor work - this probably being one of his most challenging jobs. He's getting natural light to work for him in the frequent outdoor scenes, tying it all into the frequent changes from inside to outside with Sonny leaping from hostages to police negotiations and crowds - meanwhile helicopters fly overhead, and everything needs to be captured, almost documentary-style and very naturalistically. Assistant director Burtt Harris always gets a mention from Lumet due to the general chaos and demands of the situations - and especially for going up in those helicopters and braving the heights that Lumet couldn't face. Visually, you get something of a 'news footage', documentary feel about the way everything is shot, and when you see snaps of the real life drama, you can tell that everything was being presented to us in very much that fashion. It was shot on a real street location, but the real bank wasn't used, instead being constructed as a set in a warehouse-like building. Filming on the streets was a great idea - there's no substitute for reality, and it shows. There are similarities to
The Hospital, directed by Arthur Hiller, which Victor J. Kemper worked on.
I first watched
Dog Day Afternoon in my very early 20s, and at that time I was kind of falling in love with the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking and films, most of which I'd been just too young to have caught as they were happening. This film seemed to be one of the best examples of the success of that era, being unconventional in taking the point of view of not only a villain, but breaking the taboo of having a big-name actor play an openly homosexual character who we're meant to be sympathetic for. It must have seemed progressive for it's day, and it was something I wasn't expecting from a mid-70s film. It was particularly enjoyable coming into it without knowing much of what happens, because each new revelation comes as a great surprise and adds to the excitement and head-shaking unbelievability of the crazy situation. It's such an energetic film, and it keeps a lightning-fast pace - a lively, vigorous narrative that glows with vitality and desperation. It showcased what was at the time a new situation for a new era in inner-city living - where unexpected violence is often mixed with surreal and ridiculous situations.
So,
Dog Day Afternoon goes down as one of my favourite films, and a film I still love just as much today as I did when I first watched it, for when I watched it yet again recently it still held me captive, much as Sonny does his hostages. A huge part of why it does that is the scintillating performance from Al Pacino, and the able support he gets from the likes of Chris Sarandon, John Cazale and Charles Durning, gathered in such a strange circumstance and surrounded by crowds of people baying for blood much as they did in the Colosseum in Rome. I also really enjoy Lumet's
12 Angry Men,
Fail Safe,
Serpico and of course
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - I really should get into more of his filmography, as he's a director I've not seen enough of considering the body of his work. Pacino bounding along the city streets shouting "Attica! Attica!" has become one of the enduring moments in 20th Century film, and for that we have Lumet to thank, for he knew just when to let his actors off the leash and when to reign them in. He did the right thing here, letting Pacino loose on that
Dog Day Afternoon.