Dog Day Afternoon – 1975
This was an unexpected movie. I knew next to nothing about it before watching it. I knew that it starred Al Pacino and Chris Sarandon, and that everybody who has seen it seemed to like it, but that was about it. I have never been a huge Al Pacino fan, so I would have never watched Dog Day Afternoon, which is unfortunate because it really was a very good movie. I wouldn’t call it great, but it was very good. Either way, Pacino impressed me. He played a multi-layered character that was complex and realistic. Of course, the film was based on real events and people, so the script writer, Frank Pierson, had a natural base from which to work.
The film follows the failed bank robbery attempt that took place in 1972 in Brooklyn, NY. A man named John Wojtowicz and his partner Salvatore Naturale were the perpetrators who held 7 employees of the bank at gunpoint for 14 hours. According to the film, whose accuracy is somewhat in question, their ineptness as bank robbers alerted the police to the situation, and a full-blown hostage crisis developed which had the nation watching. According to the article I read, the film covered all the key points of the event. But when the real Wojtowicz was interviewed, he claimed that the movie was only about 30% true, though he did praise Pacino and Sarandon’s portrayals as accurate.
Pacino played Sonny Wortzik, a man whose sanity is unstable. Those who know him say he has always been a good man, but then they go on to tell how he is subject to fits of anger and violence. The film portrays him as a somewhat religious man, a Catholic, but also reveals that he has several distinctly un-Catholic-like traits, the most obvious of these being his homosexuality.
However, the film was very hands-off about the touchy subject. They kept it in because it established the real reason behind the bank robbery, but didn’t explore whether it was the reason behind his fragile mental state or his explosive temper. His preoperative transsexual wife, Leon, played by Sarandon, was in a mental institution after a failed suicide attempt. He said that he was trying to “get away” from Sonny. But the bank robbery was Sonny’s way to get money for Leon’s sexual reassignment surgery.
However, after further research, I have learned that in the real story, the money for the surgery was only a secondary reason for the heist. The primary reason was that John Wojtowicz was involved with the Mafia and the whole thing was a well-planned operation that had gone horribly wrong. The movie left that entire angle out. But I guess that wouldn’t have been as shocking or controversial as a homosexual relationship and a sex-change operation.
The film’s director, Sidney Lumet, did a great job of keeping the pace quick, though not frantic. The moments of negotiations between Sonny and the Police officer, Sergeant Moretti, played by Charles Durning, were engaging and played out very well. The tension inherent in a dangerous hostage situation started the film off in a way that drew me in and kept me hoping for the safety of the bank employees. But it wasn’t until the FBI arrived to take over the negotiations that the kid gloves really seemed to come off.
Agent Sheldon, played by James Broderick, did an impressive job as a man who was in complete control of the situation. Sergeant Moretti did a good job, but the games were over when Agent Sheldon arrived. Fellow FBI employee, Agent Murphy, played by Lance Hendrickson, was also memorable, and really seemed like a man who knew what he was doing.
Other notable actors in the film were John Cazale as Sonny’s partner, Sal, Penelope Allen as senior bank teller Sylvia “Mouth”, and Sully Boyer as the stout-hearted bank manager, Mulvaney. I have discovered that Cazale is really a great actor. He is consistently good in everything in which I’ve seen him, and this film is no exception. His character was played as slow-minded, strangely religious, easily manipulated, and completely loyal to Sonny. Cazale created a very memorable tragic character.
Here is a little quote from Wikipedia that I found interesting. “The original inspiration for the film was an article written by P. F. Kluge and Thomas Moore for Life Magazine in September 1972. The article included many of the details later used in the film and noted the relationship which Wojtowicz and Naturale developed with hostages and the police. Bank manager Robert Barrett said, ‘I’m supposed to hate you guys but I’ve had more laughs tonight than I’ve had in weeks. We had a kind of camaraderie.’ Teller Shirley Bell said, ’If they had been my houseguests on a Saturday night, it would have been hilarious.”