Name Yourself Day, Long Story Short on HBO and Love, Sydney Lumet (2011)
Sidney Lumet, the New York based director responsible for classic films including, but certainly not limited to, Dog Dog Afternoon, 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, and Network, died this morning at the age of 86. Lumet was a devotee of location shooting, and New York was his favorite location of all. Appropriately enough, the director passed away in his Manhattan home.
Lumet's stepdaughter, Leslie Gimbel, tells The New York Times that the cause of death was Lymphoma.
Though he was born in Philadelphia in 1924, Sidney Lumet grew up in New York, where his father was in the Yiddish theater, paving the way for Sidney to make his acting debut on stage at five years old. In 1935, Lumet had a small role in the Broadway play Dead End. It is perhaps this acting experience that made Lumet so famously great a director of actors. Every one of his films was preceded by several weeks of rigorous rehearsals, during which an actor internalized their role and dialogue. In a testament to his technique, he directed no less than 17 actors and actresses to Oscar nominations.
After serving in World War II as a member of the Army Signal Corps, he became a second assistant director at CBS. Lumet made his feature directorial debut with 12 Angry Men, starring Henry Fonda as the lone hold out on jury otherwise convinced that a young man is absolutely guilty of murder. Though new versions have been produced over the years, Lumet's film remains the authoritative take on the material.
The social conscience and moral exploration that defined that first effort was evident in many of Lumet's films, including the 1973 fact-based cop drama and the 1975 heist-gone-wrong true story Dog Day Afternoon, both starring Al Pacino. In the former, Pacino plays an honest undercover cop for whom other police are greater threat than criminality, and the film's moral outrage at systemic corruption is implicit in every frame. In the latter, my favorite film of Lumet's, Pacino plays would-be bank robber who ends of at the center of the definitive modern hostage situation. In Dog Day Afternoon, Lumet presaged the amoral spectator mentality that is ubiquitous in modern media and culture.
The media commentary of Dog Day Afternoon was more secondary than that of arguably Lumet's most famous film, the furious 1976 satire Network. That indictment of an exploitative television network was written by Paddy Chayefsky, and is almost eerily prescient in a modern context.
Lumet was nominated for five Oscars and seven DGA awards. He was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2005, two years prior to his last film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, starring Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Lumet is survived by a stepdaughter, stepson, two daughters, and nine grandchildren.
Thanks to IAMROGUE.com's Jordan DeSaulnier
Lumet's stepdaughter, Leslie Gimbel, tells The New York Times that the cause of death was Lymphoma.
Though he was born in Philadelphia in 1924, Sidney Lumet grew up in New York, where his father was in the Yiddish theater, paving the way for Sidney to make his acting debut on stage at five years old. In 1935, Lumet had a small role in the Broadway play Dead End. It is perhaps this acting experience that made Lumet so famously great a director of actors. Every one of his films was preceded by several weeks of rigorous rehearsals, during which an actor internalized their role and dialogue. In a testament to his technique, he directed no less than 17 actors and actresses to Oscar nominations.
After serving in World War II as a member of the Army Signal Corps, he became a second assistant director at CBS. Lumet made his feature directorial debut with 12 Angry Men, starring Henry Fonda as the lone hold out on jury otherwise convinced that a young man is absolutely guilty of murder. Though new versions have been produced over the years, Lumet's film remains the authoritative take on the material.
The social conscience and moral exploration that defined that first effort was evident in many of Lumet's films, including the 1973 fact-based cop drama and the 1975 heist-gone-wrong true story Dog Day Afternoon, both starring Al Pacino. In the former, Pacino plays an honest undercover cop for whom other police are greater threat than criminality, and the film's moral outrage at systemic corruption is implicit in every frame. In the latter, my favorite film of Lumet's, Pacino plays would-be bank robber who ends of at the center of the definitive modern hostage situation. In Dog Day Afternoon, Lumet presaged the amoral spectator mentality that is ubiquitous in modern media and culture.
The media commentary of Dog Day Afternoon was more secondary than that of arguably Lumet's most famous film, the furious 1976 satire Network. That indictment of an exploitative television network was written by Paddy Chayefsky, and is almost eerily prescient in a modern context.
Lumet was nominated for five Oscars and seven DGA awards. He was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2005, two years prior to his last film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, starring Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Lumet is survived by a stepdaughter, stepson, two daughters, and nine grandchildren.
Thanks to IAMROGUE.com's Jordan DeSaulnier