Lumet's canny, crafty lenses

SIDNEY LUMET (1924-2011)

The former Dead-End kid who created some indelible films

By Jerry Saravia

Sidney Lumet passed away at the age of 86 on Saturday, April 9th, 2011. One of the great film directors of all time, Sidney Lumet was an accomplished craftsman and an actor's director. He wanted the performances to be the attention-getters, not the visual style or the camera movements. He has been called a director with no signature style but I beg to differ. His style may have been invisible but it is a style. He didn't simply set up a camera and record actors in front of it in a stagy, non-confrontational manner. Not so, in fact, Lumet was all about the lenses. The relationship between the spaces confined to the actors and the spaces surrounding them, especially in tighter and tighter corners as in his amazing film debut, "12 Angry Men," is accomplished by the choice of lenses to tell the story. "Different lenses tell different stories," as he remarked to host James Lipton on the "Inside the Actor's Studio" show.

That brings us to his seminal film, the best damn media satire ever written, "Network" from 1976, which is cold and abrasive, spectacularly funny and darkly serious, and about as prescient a film as it was when it first burst onto to the cinema screens. "Network" is about how the television news organizations have become sullied and demoralized by executives looking for a fast buck - to show the old network geezers that it can make money and be a ratings climber if it just became a "whorehouse." It is not about peddling news, it is about peddling trash or turning something genuine into a freak show minus integrity. The fact that a veteran anchorman, Howard Beale (brilliantly played by the late Peter Finch) has a meltdown on the air in his last show ferments and necessitates a talk show of his own, where he can speak about the truth and tell everyone what they are already thinking -  "I am mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore." The reason he gets the show is because a soulless programming director (Faye Dunaway) foresees a ratings hit, considering that Howard Beale's own supposed meltdown became the top story in all the newspapers, easily eclipsing world events (sound familiar?)

Lumet's color and lighting palette in "Network" is subtle, so subtle that it is virtually unseen. As Lumet describes it, the opening scene is virtually shot with very little light when it begins with William Holden as a news producer and Finch joking about an old news story. As the film progresses, more and more lighting patterns emerge - as Lumet had put it, he corrupts the camera ("The movie camera is the fourth star.") By the end of the film, when a decision is made to (*spoiler alert*) assassinate Howard Beale on his own show (still one of the most shocking endings ever seen in a film, no matter how jaded you are), it is all lit as if it were a Ford commercial complete with Robert Duvall slicking his hair back.

Sidney Lumet is known for many other films, all of them primarily set in New York City, yet he has often deviated from police dramas and robbery flicks set in the thick grit of the Empire state. His sole musical, "The Wiz," is a dazzling, entertaining take on "The Wizard of Oz" with just as many memorable songs as the Judy Garland classic. He also crafted a sweet love story called "Lovin' Molly" with Anthony Perkins and Beau Bridges; "The Group" which was a feminist satire saddled with controversial issues from the late 60's; the Eugene O'Neill play that has some of the strongest acting turns in recent history in "Long Day's Journey Into Night"; the highly suspenseful "Deathtrap" with Christopher Reeve in possibly the only performance I've seen of his where he played an insincere manipulator; the tricky and enlightening Agatha Christie melodrama "Murder on the Orient Express"; a 1970 documentary on Martin Luther King, Jr. called "King: A Filmed Record...", among others.

My favorite Lumet pictures would have to be "Network," "Prince of the City," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Verdict," one of the best courtroom dramas ever made with the stellar Paul Newman, "Running on Empty," which is certainly Lumet's most overpoweringly emotional film, and certainly "The Anderson Tapes" which features a spectacular debut by a young Christopher Walken. I admire "Serpico" but it is not nearly as revelatory as it was in 1973, if for no other reason than the fact that police corruption has grown more complicated than the film shows. "Q & A" has an awful soundtrack (songs by Ruben Blades whom I don't think much of) and is far less enticing than Lumet's other police dramas, including the improbable yet diverting "Night Falls on Manhattan." "Family Business" is simply improbable all around with an even worse soundtrack by Cyle Coleman, though the film is saved by the memorable performances of Sean Connery (a frequent Lumet collaborator), Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick. "The Morning After" and "A Stranger Among Us" are simply bad pictures with none of the magic of Lumet - his remake of John Cassevetes' "Gloria" is a horrendously and unintentionally campy joke of a movie and worth seeing for that reason alone (nothing wrong with watching Sharon Stone running around the NYC streets in high heels).

"Network," though, is the film of Sidney Lumet's career, showcasing him at the height of his directorial powers with a fantastic script by the late Paddy Chayefsky. It is a masterful film, bleak and funny, with William Holden, Robert Duvall, Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway giving the performances of their lives. More than that, it is a scary, angry picture about how the news became corrupted and transformed into trashy entertainment, for the sake of ratings. The film itself is the very definition of satire, and I think Lumet was the only director that could've made it. Sidney Lumet - an accomplished craftsman, an actor's director and, yes, he had a signature style. The former Dead End Kid had a style all his own after all.