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Sidney Lumet

 

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Director / Screenwriter / Producer
1924 - 
Born June 25, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Key Production Country: USA 
Key Genres: Drama, Courtroom Drama, Police Drama, Family Drama, Docudrama, Urban Drama, Crime
Key Collaborators: Philip Rosenberg (Production Designer), Boris Kaufman (Cinematographer), Andrzej Bartkowiak (Cinematographer), Ralph Rosenblum (Editor), Tony Walton (Production Designer), Sean Connery (Leading Player), Harry Andrews (Leading Character Player), Oswald Morris (Cinematographer), Dede Allen (Editor), Quincy Jones (Composer)
Highly Recommended: 12 Angry Men (1957), Fail-Safe (1964), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), The Verdict (1982)
Recommended: The Hill (1965), Serpico (1973), Network (1976), Running on Empty (1988), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)
Worth a Look: The Fugitive Kind (1959), The Pawnbroker (1965), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Equus (1977), Prince of the City (1981), Q&A (1990), Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), Find Me Guilty (2006)
Links: [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Film Reference ] [ Sidney Lumet: A Serious Voice in the American Cinema ] [ FilmForce Featured Filmmaker ] [ New York Mag Interview (2007) ] [ Hollywood Reporter Article: Honorary Oscar ] [ Jam! Interview (2007) ] [ Telegraph Article (2008) ] [ Sight & Sound Article (2008) ]
Books: [ Making Movies ] [ Sidney Lumet: Film and Literary Vision ] [ Sidney Lumet ] [ Sidney Lumet: Interviews ] [ Street Smart: The New York of Lumet, Allen, Scorsese, and Lee ]
DVD's: [ Amazon ]
1,000 Greatest Films: 12 Angry Men (1957), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976), The Verdict (1982)
21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)
 
12 Angry Men (1957)Fail-Safe (1964)Dog Day Afternoon (1975)Network (1976)
 
     
  "Although Sidney Lumet has applied his talents to a variety of genres (drama, comedy, satire, caper, romance, and even a musical), he has proven himself most comfortable and effective as a director of serious psychodramas and was most vulnerable when attempting light entertainments. His Academy Award nominations, for example, have all been for character studies of men in crisis, from his first film, Twelve Angry Men, to The Verdict." - Stephen E. Bowles (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)  
     
  "At its best, Lumet's direction is efficiently vehicular but pleasantly impersonal...When his subjects are responsible, as in Long Day's Journey Into Night, his services are valuable. In most other instances, only his innate good taste saves him from utter mediocrity...Lumet shows no sign of ever rising above the middle-brow aspirations of his projects to become the master rather than the mimic of the current trend away from Hollywood.." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)  
     
  "This American film-maker used to be my favourite director. I was ecstatic over 12 Angry Men, impressed by The Pawnbroker and trampled on by The Hill; and thought The Deadly Affair about the best thriller of its decade. Such worship makes it all the more difficult to be objective, but I think disillusionment started about The Group, with its ragbag of disparate elements which Lumet made, as with many of his later films, so dislikeable as to alienate one from the movie itself." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)  
     
  "Repression and its explosive effects have been explored by Lumet. He makes social statements in comedies and dramas that are unusually tense and pulsating." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)  
     
  "For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident." - Sidney Lumet  
     
 
 
 

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"A film is a petrified fountain of thought." - Jean Cocteau   "If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed." - Stanley Kubrick