Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola are revered for their early work and quite rightly so, but Sidney Lumet stands with them in every way. He started as a child actor, and then a stage and TV director. His first film, 12 Angry Men, is the story of a jury and the conclusions they jump to based on race and class. Lumet made it from TV to movies with that one and then made more than forty films outside the gates of Hollywood. Which made him distinct and kept his work singularly focused. A New Yorker, humanist, and moralist, Lumet captures a world filled with corrupt cops, crusading bank robbers, and people fighting a terrible system. These are the best of his best.
Al Pacino is Sonny, and John Cazale is Sal. They are robbing a bank in New York on a hot summer day. But it all goes mad from the start. The robbery becomes a media circus, a cause célèbre, and finally a cry for help. Sonny has a wife, kids, and a boyfriend who needs a sex change; that’s why they are pulling the heist. The sweaty emotional honesty of the characters has you rooting for the crooks. Pacino towers in this role as a bisexual bank robber and Vietnam vet. Cazale’s short Movie Helper career is written in the stars; he played in only a few movies (The Godfather I and II, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, and Deer Hunter), but all were Best Picture material. This is one of the most powerful films of the ’70s.
You’re television incarnate, Diana, indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.
—William Holden, Network
Shocking parody of TV that anticipates the dominance of reality shows and the commercialization of news as entertainment. Howard Beale (Peter Finch in his last role) is a raving-mad news anchor getting high ratings for his ranting. Diana (Faye Dunaway) is an insanely ambitious exec who convinces the boss to let her have Howard Beale and turn the news into a reality show with horoscopes, court TV, and Beale as a mad prophet. She also signs an active terrorist group to a reality show deal. Meanwhile, Max (William Holden) is Howard’s boss and lifelong friend. He hates what’s happening but still breaks up his marriage by having an affair with Diana. Sharp, pointed, caustic, and brilliantly acted. Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, and Beatrice Straight (who plays Holden’s wife) all copped statues. This picture calls out TV for what it is: a soulless vortex of greed and advertising. Stinging.
Every cop in New York is on the take except Frank Serpico (Al Pacino), and the rest of the NYPD would rather see him die than stand by while he blows the whistle on them. Gritty and uncompromising, Pacino is dogged in being the only good guy in a rotten world, subtle and sincere in the days when he specialized in that. This is also a true story of uncovering corruption and how the forces that be conspire and react with deadly force.
Lumet takes on the law and legality. Paul Newman shines as a drunk ambulance-chasing lawyer who gets tipped to an easy, open-and-shut medical malpractice case, but his conscience is awoken when he sees the victim in a coma and decides to do the right thing. Everyone is against him: the Catholic Church, the other legal team, even his girlfriend. A stirring courtroom drama that rages against the legal system and takes on life and death. Lumet hits a home run by casting Newman against his usual confident persona.