Dog Day Afternoon

(dir. Sidney Lumet, 1975)

Nov. 18, 2008

Dog Day Title (shrunk).jpg

If all the evidence you had to go on were the movies he’s made in the past 25 years, you’d be hard-pressed to believe that Al Pacino is theoretically capable of delivering truly epic performances, operatic discourses of emotion that rise like the tide and finally tumble over into greatness.

Yes, he was sweetly convincing in Mike Newell’s underrated, low-rung mob picture, “Donnie Brasco.” But I probably get more out of watching “Insomnia” than I should, simply because Pacino doesn’t rely on his hambone ploy of hollering dialogue at moments when no one in their right mind would normally be hollering. It makes terrible sense that he finally snagged his “take the damn thing” Oscar for “Scent of a Woman,” in which he played a man who, by definition, blindly shouts his way through life.

At his peak in the 1970s, though, only Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro threw off the kind of sparks that emanated from Pacino’s overloaded circuitry. Back in the day, there was an animal trapped inside this guy; tension arose in his performances because you never quite knew when he would lunge, but when he did, the attack made perfect sense.

Think of his outbursts in the “Godfather” pictures. During the scene in “Part II” where Kay finally reveals to Michael that she secretly aborted his child, Pacino drops into a tremor, then screams so brutally at poor Diane Keaton it’s a wonder she doesn’t shit on the floor. I’ve seen the movie at least 15 times, so I know full-well it’s coming, and it’s a wonder I don’t shit on the floor.

                                                ***

I think Pacino’s work in the first two installments of Coppola’s magnum opus is as masterful as anything I’ve ever seen, and I’m not exactly alone in that assessment. But, I tell you what, he’s just as unforgettable as Sonny Wortzik, the would-be bank robber in Sidney Lumet’s masterful anxiety-ballet “Dog Day Afternoon.” Although the narrative is mostly confined to an enclosed space that represents Sonny’s mortifying lack of options, the character is put through a set of paces that eventually leaves both him and the audience bone-tired. Pacino traverses this psychological landscape like a man who simply has to believe, even when he’s pretty obviously doomed.

Like so many great movies from the period, “Dog Day Afternoon” doesn’t exactly end with a hot fudge sundae, but it’s easy to forget that much of it is deeply, darkly hilarious. It’s speaks volumes about the complexity of Pacino’s characterization that Sonny doesn’t seem like such a bad guy, not really, even though he’s taken it upon himself to attempt an armed robbery. He’s just doesn’t plan very well. And he’s having a chrome-plated motherfucker of a bad day.

Dog Day Afternoon.jpg

The story, which is based on an actual event, opens with Sonny, his disturbingly dour buddy, Sal (John Cazale), and another accomplice - who soon chickens out and flees - entering a quiet Brooklyn bank on a miserably hot summer afternoon. When Sonny thinks the coast is finally clear, he (quite ungracefully) whips a rifle out of the long box he’s been carrying under his arm, tells the aging guard to lock the front door, and demands that the manager hand over the money in the vault.

Unfortunately, Sonny miscalculated when the money would be picked up for transfer, so there’s virtually nothing left to steal, and the guy across the street has caught on that something’s up over at the bank.

Soon, what was supposed to take ten minutes turns into a grueling, hours-long therapy session hosted by a police negotiator and a SWAT team. Plus, the cops have turned off the air-conditioning, and the street is lined with New York-style gawkers and TV cameras. Sonny and Sal have to figure out what to do next while fielding phone calls from TV reporters and garden-variety whack-jobs. They also have to keep the group of cynical female bank tellers who are now their hostages from driving them nuts via nervous collapses, bathroom-break demands, and outbursts of withering sarcasm.

Remember, when “Dog Day Afternoon” was released in 1975, there were no 24-hour news channels, and reality TV wasn’t even a distant stink on the horizon. The idea that a common criminal might become a prime-time media star was still an exotic concept, so Sonny’s predicament quickly evolves into an overwrought sideshow, a summertime novelty gone badly wrong. There are moments when things get so crazy, it wouldn’t seem out of place if somebody fired up a calliope.

One of the more entertaining aspects of Frank Pierson’s crackling screenplay is how the gathering crowd begins to side with Sonny, over the somewhat buffoonish plain-clothes policeman (Charles Durning) who tries to cajole him into releasing the hostages. Pierson also develops unexpected relationships between the hostages and their frazzled captors, and his dialogue is razor-sharp. Pacino generates a handful of belly-laughs with his exasperated asides, most of which are directed solely at himself.

When the phone rings for what seems like the 300th time, and Sonny picks it up and mockingly answers with the New York radio station salutation, “WNEW plays all the hits,” the sense of place and time are driven home. Telling little touches like that - Sonny also assures the hostages he doesn’t want to kill anybody by pointing out “I’m a Catholic” - give “Dog Day Afternoon” a grounding in offbeat reality. The whole thing seems too nutty not to be real.

                                                ***

Between this picture and “Network,” Lumet pretty much had it nailed as the most prescient filmmaker of the 1970s. He displays an innate grasp of how the media dictates the zeitgeist, rather than simply covering it while it blossoms on its own. He also, and this shouldn’t be underestimated, handles the cramped interior of the bank for maximum impact. His shots are laid out in a logical manner that allows you to keep your bearings; you always know where Sonny is in relation to the deadly rifles across the street. And his mostly static camera suddenly barrels up and down the length of the room when the tension rises to a boiling point.

The only other film I can think of that squeezes so much angst out of cramped quarters is Wolfgang Peterson’s German submarine masterpiece, “Das Boot.” Both pictures are claustrophobic in the extreme, and you get the feeling the main characters are gulping their air, rather than simply breathing it. Sonny certainly has more oxygen at the ready than the sailors on Peterson’s doomed U-boat. But he also knows that his next breath could very easily be his last. No wonder he looks like his head is in a vice grip.

Lumet, a former thespian himself, always coaxes superb performances from his actors. Cazale, who you undoubtedly know as “Fredo” from “The Godfather,” brings a wild-eyed intensity to Sal that only gets scarier when he says something funny. Sal, you see, isn’t joking. He just can’t grasp reality, and is willing to kill hostages if it means staying out of jail.

Sonny’s slow realization that his friend might be the most dangerous element of an increasingly unstable situation adds yet another dose of off-the-wall intensity. Pacino’s increasingly twitchy, darting eyes convey just as much information as his dialogue. Sonny’s in so far over his head, he doesn’t know where to look.

Even though Cazale is remarkable, supporting performance bragging rights still have to go to Chris Sarandon, as a bathrobe-wearing, trans-gender psych patient named Leon. I won’t elaborate on Sonny’s relationship with the character, for fear of ruining a pivotal surprise. But the desperate telephone conversation that police set up for the two men ranks with Peter Sellers’ chat with the Russian premiere in “Dr. Strangelove” as one of the most devastatingly surreal hook-ups ever filmed. It’s probably the best scene in a picture that’s packed with great moments, including a genuinely iconic one.

Attica (shrunk).jpg

That would be when Sonny steps out of the bank to confront the firearm-bearing cops, and, realizing that the crowd is actually starting to pull for him, chooses to deliver an impromptu, one-word editorial comment on the specter of police brutality.

It should be explained to viewers who haven’t stumbled upon coverage of one of the uglier events in U.S. law enforcement history, that Sonny’s cries of “Attica! Attica! Attica!” refer to the slaughter that took place at Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York in 1971. In a nutshell, there was a prison uprising, and state troopers were eventually sent in to take care of a hostage situation by shooting anyone who got in the way, whether they were prisoners or guards who were unfortunate enough to have been captured by the inmates. When it was all over, 37 people were dead.

Once again, there’s consistency to Lumet’s vision here; he’s not an innocent bystander to the magnitude of Pacino’s achievement. Sonny could just as easily be yelling, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” and the sequence would play exactly the same way.

The “Attica” scene is Pacino’s obvious crowd-pleaser, his Oscar moment— not that he actually won one in 1975. Nicholson picked it up that year for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and if there were ever two more electrifying performances nominated in the same year, I’d be hard-pressed to name them.

The similarities between Sonny and R.P. McMurphy are startling. Both men are straining against an America that dangles freedom like a carrot in front of its citizens, only to snatch it back the moment they truly attempt to break free. Their victory lies in raging until the very end, even though they know their triumph will come permeated with heavy grief. They "win" because they simply refuse to acknowledge defeat.

Paul Tatara

Tags:
»
RSS Feed