"Dog Day Afternoon," Sidney Lumet, Film Review

"Dog Day Afternoon," Sidney Lumet, Film Review

'Dog Day Afternoon' is a message film.  That's obvious from the opening sequence, showing gravestones in front of a view of skyscrapers and alternating scenes of haves and have-nots living in the city.  This is going to be a message film that is going to teach you something, this sequence screams at us.  I don't know about you, but that's a promise that fills me with fear.

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
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Sure enough, we get a surprise gay wife and pointed references to the real-life Attica prison incident, where hostages and prisoners were both killed in the retaking of the prison.

'Dog Day Afternoon' raises interesting questions for writers on the relationship between real-life events and screenplays, as well as how theatrical performances can influence this relationship.  Al Pacino used method acting techniques to show his character's exhaustion, for example, and much of the film's final dialogue was improvised.

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"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Many, perhaps most, films suffer from contrived fictional screenplays, made all the worse by commercial pressures leading to cuts and changes at the expense of narrative sense.  On the other hand, true life stories are often ghastly products where fictionalized sequences are needed to cover unknowable areas.  Even when a lot of the facts are known, the impossibility of a screenplay writer going back in time and inhabiting the heads of the real-life characters causes problems of its own.  Plus, to follow real-life events with all their messiness, irrelevant details, coincidences, inane dialogue and random unlinked characters and circumstances isn't often a recipe for a satisfactory screenplay.

So what's the answer?  There isn't one.  Perhaps fiction writers should look for the bizarre and often satisfyingly causal inputs from real life, and real-life story writers shouldn't be afraid to fictionalize and restructure the events.

And method actors are always going to be hammy.




'Dog Day Afternoon' treads a pretty decent path between all these hazards.  The improvised dialogue and action is mostly convincing, the sheer bizarreness of the bisexual bigamous bank robber and his amateurish and unplanned robbery gives a nice real-life sheen, and the whole thing has been artfully crafted and manipulated into a satisfying piece of fiction.  After that initial Elton John song there's hardly any music in the film, giving it a naturalistic feel, and little plot hitches for the characters to solve come bouncing in like balls from a tennis serving machine.  The showy performance from Al Pacino is very watchable while obviously false.  It's a paradox of method acting that all the preparation and physical training lead to a simulation of real life but the sheer effort of it somehow comes across at the same time in an un-naturalistic way.  If you've ever seen Monsters University it's the difference from a book-learned roar and a roar from the heart.

Personal Score: 7/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

"The Thing," John Carpenter, Film Review

"The Thing," John Carpenter, Film Review

People often talk about the paranoia displayed in "The Thing" and I recently reviewed Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation," another film often presented as displaying paranoia.  Yet paranoia is most clearly recognized when it is based on unfounded fears and in both of these films the intense suspicion that arises in the characters is very much based on legitimate fears.

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In "The Conversation" Caul knows he is being bugged himself and his insider knowledge of the trade means that he knows only too well how difficult to detect the techniques can be.  And in "The Thing" the group of American scientists working on an Antarctic base know that the alien that has infiltrated their group can exactly resemble a human being and – if they don't stop it – will proceed to take over the entire human race.  Hardly the cause of misplaced anxiety.

From a dramatic point of view, paranoia or intense suspicion is more effective if it exists in response to a genuine threat.  The audience cares more and the tension is greater because more is at stake.  "The Thing" is all the stronger for having an all-male cast, so the temptation of introducing love stories or jealousy plots is removed from the director.  The suspicion is seen in its purest form.

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"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

In the barren freezing ice of the Antarctic, the oily slick of organics is the only thing keeping the outpost going, whether it’s the diesel driving the generator, the cans of kerosene often used to start fires, or the alcohol and marijuana consumed by the staff.

There is another early scene where non-human opponent beats a human – the chess machine.  But in this case the opponent is easily defeated by pouring alcohol into its electronics.  It’s a tiny echo of what's to come.

The film is nicely structured and neatly contained to just over ninety minutes.  At the end of the first half hour the alien reveals itself in the horrific dog pen scene.  After the first hour the wider human takeover plot is out in the open, to be solved or not.

Some of the editing seems to be at the expense of the story making sense.  Blair maps the possible spread of the alien and has a completely human response of fear and anxiety, yet he later turns out to be infected.  Blair also implausibly builds a UFO from spare helicopter parts in a rushed scene.  Fuch's death outside is weirdly underdeveloped.

There are other logical inconsistencies as well but the overall impact on the viewer is the intense suspicion between the men confined in the camp.  Ennio Morricone's music also superbly compliments the tension.

Why don't we just... wait here for a little while... see what happens?" says MacReady at the end as he prepares to freeze to death with another character who may or may not be taken over by the alien.

Personal Score: 7/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

"Umberto D.," Vittorio De Sica, Film Review

"Umberto D.," Vittorio De Sica, Film Review

A black and white film in the IMDB top 250 list has to have weathered the storm of cretins that keep voting the Lord of the Rings trilogy into the top 10, and the result is that the few B&W films that survive are usually pretty good.  Umberto D. is no exception, although doubtless its IMDB status has benefited from the film being a tearjerker with a cute dog.  Don't worry, this is no Marley & Me, but rather a thoughtful film about a retired civil servant by neorealist Italian director Vittorio De Sica.

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Anyone who's owned a dog knows that – like children – they bring heartache as well as joy.  All the more so, given dogs' short lifespans and host of untreatable illnesses.

So the companionship that Flick gives the character Umberto Ferrari in this film comes with responsibility.  However little Umberto thinks of his own life, he can't bring himself to abandon his dog before he goes.  He finally decides a double suicide is the only answer but the dog has other ideas, and the dog's simple love of life is the only slight ray of light at the end of the film.

The force of machines against weak man is seen at the beginning and end of the film.  One of the first scenes includes an overhead shot of a tram shoving through a crowd of demonstrating pensioners, and at the end the train that Umberto intended to use for his suicide blasts past so violently you can almost smell it.

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"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Umberto's loneliness and isolation is shown in all its nasty reality.  People are only interested in what they can get out of him.  His only human friendships are with the maid in his boarding house and with the patient in the next bed when he ends up in a hospital run by nuns.  Religion is conspicuous by its absence for most of the film.  The only use it serves Umberto is to extend his stay in the hospital when he flatters the nun sister by requesting a rosary.

The film is driven by a series of problems presented to its characters – Umberto must find money to avoid being evicted; the maid is pregnant by one of two soldiers; Umberto loses his dog and must find him; he can't find a good home for his dog; he can't find a way to die.

What's less traditional for a plot, but more true to life, is that there are no easy answers found to any of these problems.  Umberto's old friends won't loan him the money; he doesn't find a new home for the dog; he does lose his room regardless of the money; he can't find a way to die; the maid will lose her job because of her pregnancy; she can't return to her village because she'd be beaten; she can't persuade either of her boyfriends to commit to her.

The landlady and her grim friends continue their party-filled lives around Umberto with no compassion whatever for his position or for his illness.

'Do you think there'll be war?' asks Umberto's old work colleague, having refused him a loan.  The war echoes throughout the film.  In the pound, stray dogs are gassed behind closed doors.  And the uncaring attitude of people towards their fellow man seems to sum up the conditions that allowed the war atrocities to occur in the first place, along with the general willingness to abandon to death the old, weak and useless.

Only the innocence of children seems to be untainted.  The maid is child-like and is still at school.  She deals with life in a simple manner throughout.  And Umberto tries to give his dog to a young girl, who is delighted at the idea – but the plan is soon stopped by adults.  The dog's playful and joyous attitude to life also links in with the theme of childhood.

A young audience today might scoff at Umberto's complaint that he has served thirty years in the government, given the state of their own pensions, but seeing human nature through the mirror of a poor and different society from today's world is fascinating, made all the more interesting by De Sica's constant refusal to manufacture glib answers.

Personal Score: 7/10

Follow @MichaelHardach



This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

"The Conversation," Francis Ford Coppola, Film Review

"The Conversation," Francis Ford Coppola, Film Review

It's a pleasure to watch a review a great film under the control of a great director after the past few weeks' reviews of dodgy mid-table IMDB Top 250 films.  One of Coppola's strengths is his ability to show the messy complexity and sophistication of modern city life.  He did it in The Godfather two years earlier, and he does it here in The Conversation.

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The surveillance theme of The Conversation resonates nicely with recent news events in the UK and US.  Many ideas from the film have proved to be just as true today:  the use of nerdy social misfit superbrains to spy on normal society; the inevitable temptation of the operators to abuse their power (nicely illustrated here when two girls pucker up to the mirrored windows of the surveillance van while the operators inside leer at and photograph them); the ridiculous lengths the operators will go to in order to get what they want – achieving what might be reasonably assumed as impossible by throwing resources and technology at the problem.

Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.

      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Throughout the film, the music is great and nicely woven in.  The piazza music, characters humming tunes, the main operator, Gene Hackman's Caul, playing along with jazz records in his apartment on his saxophone.

Shot after shot is beautiful and thoughtfully done, the complexity of city buildings, underground carpark columns, office structures all adding gorgeous complexity to the frame.  Also, shots are often obscured (by curtains etc) to echo with the surveillance theme.

Gene Hackman pulls off a nice social misfit performance.  The arrogance of his character comes over.  He trashes his flat at the end looking for a bug, yet the tap was probably produced by technology he'd seen earlier at a rival's stand at a trade show, which transforms telephones into bug devices.  He dismissed the technology on display as rubbish, preferring his own handmade devices.

The stripped flat seems to represent Caul's stripped psyche by the end of the film, with old childhood wallpaper exposed and rough floorboards revealed under the thin flashy veneer.

And his destruction of a religious figurine in his search for the bug seems to characterize some wider betrayal of his religious beliefs caused by his work.

His religious beliefs in turn seem linked to a childhood near-death experience we hear about in a dream sequence.

It's this kind of character complexity that rewards repeated viewings and which gives a sense of real life spilling messily through the artificial structure of a film script.

Harrison Ford's performance as a gay assistant to the sinister Director who commissioned Caul's surveillance is another gutsy onscreen effort.

Everyone has gone the extra mile in this film to produce outstanding acting, cinematography, music, script, plot and sets – they're all great.

Perhaps it's too much misdirection to have Cindy Williams' character, Ann, one half of the couple under surveillance, as such a saintly sweetheart in the recorded tapes.  She begs a quarter from her partner for a busker and then she gets upset at the sight of a homeless man.  It's a bit much that she turns out to be a calculating killer for money.

And on the subject of women characters, all three of the main women are whores, which gives a misogynistic undertone to the film.  Caul pays his girlfriend's rent.  The showgirl who seduces Caul to steal his tapes is a hooker (it's a nice touch that she earlier tells Caul not to worry about the ethics of his work and to treat it like turning a trick), and even saintly Ann has married her balding older husband presumably for his money and ultimately she plots his murder with her real lover.

Personal Score: 9/10

Follow @MichaelHardach



This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.