Dog Day Afternoon

"One of Sidney Lumet's best jobs of directing and one of Al Pacino's best performances (as a bisexual bank robber) come together in a populist thriller with lots of New York juice." – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

Still the standard by which many New York movies are compared, Lumet's terrific telling of a true-story Brooklyn bank robbery gone way out of hand is just as captivating as ever. In an Oscar-nominated role, Al Pacino is winning as Sonny, the young man leading the job to get his girlfriend's sex-change operation (Chris Sarandon, also Oscar-nominated) and becoming a media sensation in the process. By turns funny and suspenseful, Dog Day Afternoon remains disarmingly uncanny in how easily we confuse news, spectacle, and entertainment, relishing the vicarious thrill at the expense of others. With John Cazale and Charles Durning lending first-rate supporting performances.

For a half-a-century he made some of your favorite American movies. For Sidney Lumet, the work was the thing and his craft, self-effacing. Though his films earned a combined total of 46 Oscar nominations, it was not until he received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar - for his "brilliant service to screenwriters, performers, and the art of the motion picture" six years before his death in 2005 that the coveted statuette eluded him. With the revealing self-portrait, By Sidney Lumet, and seven of his most beloved films, CGAC pays long overdue tribute to an American master and his classics.

Check out the rest of our At Long Last Lumet program!