Dog Day Afternoon
By Kit Macdonald
Filmoteca's Sidney Lumet season - it would have been the celebrated American director's 100th birthday on June 25 - continues with three screenings of his 1975 Best Screenplay Oscar-winner Dog Day Afternoon. Starring Al Pacino, who was in his mid-30s and in the first flush of success after his breakout performances as Michael Corleone in the first two Godfather films, it also earned Lumet the second of his four career Best Director Academy Award nominations.
Pacino brings a brittle intensity and a deep well of sympathy to his portrayal of Sonny Wortzik, a desperate man who, along with his friend Sal (John Cazale), decides to rob a bank in Brooklyn to pay for his lover’s gender reassignment surgery. The vulnerable, jumpy Sonny's first foray into crime goes predictably badly and a tense and chaotic hostage situation ensues involving a standoff with the NYPD and a media frenzy that has frenzied, claustrophobic parallels with aspects of Lumet's Network, which he made straight after Dog Day Afternoon.