Sidney Lumet Passes Away at 86

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, The Verdict, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Network, The Wiz, 12 Angry Men, and The Fugitive Kind are all films that I have studied with reverence and/or have stayed with me over the years to varying degrees. I remember seeing The Wiz in a junior high music class and being both charmed and bewildered by its reworking of the Wizard of Oz. How could somebody remake a movie that was as well known as the Wizard of Oz, but deviate so far from the original in its stylistic choices? I think it was the first time I was conscious that that was possible. The first time I saw Network, I thought it was one of the most daring, not to mention, one of the funniest movies I'd ever seen. It remains one of my all-time favorites. I have seen Dog Day Afternoon many times and I have learned something different about how movies should be made every time. It takes a deft hand to build suspense and anxiety and then to cooly dissipate it before leaving the viewer on the edge of their seat when you are trying to illustrate a bank robber's standoff with the police in which most of the action is primarily confined within a bank. It also takes a very diplomatic director to talk Al Pacino into playing the role of a gay bank robber whose partner needs the money for a sex change operation. The fact that Sidney Lumet could so completely absorb and enthrall viewers with a film about twelve jurors deliberating in a jury room is a testament to his directorial greatness. When I think of how the filmmakers were able not only to overcome, but to use to their advantage the spatial limitations within that room, I think of the silent films in which so much information must be communicated within the confines of movement. Limitations. The greats knew how to work with limitations. Limitations of time, available light sources, filmmaking equipment, money. I don't know exactly how much it took to make Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, but compared to other big studio fare, it probably wasn't much. I saw that film the first time I visited Los Angeles and certain images from it are still fresh in my head. In fact, I have more first-time memories of watching Sidney Lumet's movies than I do of anyone else's and that is probably because they endure after you leave the theatre or your couch and many long years after that. R.I.P. Sidney Lumet.