(upbeat piano music)
- So there's a few reasons why
I've watched Dog Day Afternoon
over and over and over again.
The first thing, which I think you could say about
every Sidney Lumet movie, actually,
but really struck me for the first time
or I was able to articulate it for the first time
watching Dog Day Afternoon,
is that Sidney Lumet loves all his characters.
He loves them all, and he doesn't ever
distance himself from them or put them over here,
or laugh at them, or other them in any way.
And it doesn't matter what that character's behaviour is,
or how unused we are to seeing a certain kind
of character on film,
he greets everybody with a certain amount
of love and compassion.
And that for me was revelatory.
- All right, freeze!
Nobody move.
- [Sal] Get over there!
- [Sonny] Okay, all right, get away from those alarms.
Come on!
Now get in the centre.
He moves, take his head off.
Put the gun on him, get outta the centre.
- Sonny?
I can't do it, Sonny.
- What?
- I'm not gonna make it, Sonny.
- I think it was actually over the pandemic,
I just kind of went on this kick
of watching all the films of his that I had seen,
and all of the films that I hadn't seen of his,
and just re-watched them trying to find what it was in them
that made me feel so deeply connected to something human.
And it was that.
And Dog Day Afternoon, I think is also an amazing example
of his ability to
be modest and disappear himself as the filmmaker.
If you really look at it carefully, the camera's always
in exactly the right place,
and the camera movements or positions
are beautifully choreographed,
but he doesn't need you to notice that.
He never draws attention to himself.
It's all in service of what's happening.
So, just that idea of that efficiency
of finding the perfect shot,
the perfect place to be,
the perfect way to move a camera,
without it needing to become about you and your artistry
and centering the story that you're telling
and the actors in front of the camera
was really inspiring to me.
I just feel like there are very few artists where
you can just feel who they are as a person in their work,
and I just feel you can feel him
and that there's something so deeply good about him.
in all of his films that I find endlessly inspiring.
- Leon, you all right, Leon?
Whats the matter, they give you a shot down
at the hospital or something?
- Oh, God, they shot me with like, unreal.
- You gotta get a hold of yourself, Leon,
so that you can talk to him
and see if he can come out the bank.
- Oh, hell no.
- I can't help it, I can't stop him from anything.
- Well, if he won't listen to you,
who will he listen to?
- I-I can't, I can't, I can't talk to him.
He won't listen to anybody.
He's been crazy all summer.
- I saw it first probably 20 years ago,
and I remember being riveted by Al Pacino's performance
and it made a big impression on me,
but I didn't think about it beyond that.
And then going back to it,
I felt like I saw all of these things
that were so profoundly important to me.
And yeah, one of those things is
with Chris Sarandon's character,
the idea of,
of portraying that character in that way,
at that time.
- Well, I couldn't explain the things I did.
So I went to a psychiatrist,
who told me,
that I was a woman trapped in a man's body.
- And of course, yeah, audiences mapped
all kinds of stuff onto that,
that I don't think Sidney Lumet intended,
where people brought their own prejudices
and bias into the theater.
But I think what he's doing is he's loving every character.
And so, I don't know if Sidney Lumet was the most
progressive person in the world on trans issues.
Probably not,
but I think if you have that base agenda,
that everyone is to be loved and respected
in the story you're telling, what you're gonna arrive at
is positive about everybody,
regardless of gender identification or race.
I think what you're gonna arrive at is a kind of equalizer.
And I just feel like he approached his characters
with this tremendous love and empathy,
and didn't seek to judge them.
And I just think of so many filmmakers even today
that I admire and love, who would use a character like that,
maybe not a trans character, but a character like that,
that's kind of out of step somehow
with mainstream society,
as a moment that could get a laugh,
or a moment to distance,
or a moment to sort of become a curiosity.
And he just doesn't do that.
And I feel deeply for Al Pacino's character's feelings
for that character, and I feel like it doesn't make him,
to me it connects me more to him.
And I mean, I just love that character so much.
I love how Al Pacino is so, he's so tightly wound
and yet he's so kind of strangely calm in moments,
and everything just feels wound so tight
and it could explode at any minute.
But there's just these moments for humour
and play and theatricality,
and it's so efficient, the whole film,
it just feels like the most efficient thing
where the tension doesn't drop for a single second.
And yet, there's space and time
for these strangely human moments.
(sombre piano music)