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Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)
Aug
22
1972
Sal (John Cazale) and Sonny (Al Pacino) in the bank, holding out with their increasingly impatient hostages. DP: Victor J. Kemper.
“Sal? Ready to go?”
– Sonny
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Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973)
Jul
30
National Whistleblower Day
The cover of the Austrian film magazine “Neues Filmprogramm”. A red-filtered lobby card of Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) and his partner (F. Murray Abraham, uncredited) during police proceedings. DP: Arthur J. Ornitz.
In the late 1960s, Frank Serpico worked as a plainclothes cop for the #NYPD. He spoke out when he uncovered systematic, widespread #corruption within the force, but his findings were ignored. In 1970, Serpico cowrote a page 1 article for the New York Times about the problem, which led to the instalment of the Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption aka the Knapp Commission.
“The reality is that we do not wash our own laundry; it just gets dirtier.”
– Frank Serpico
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Fail Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964)
Apr
5
National Nebraska Day
General Black (Dan O'Herlihy) being briefed. DP: Gerald Hirschfeld.
The one that got bombed by Strangelove.
“You're talking about a different kind of war.”
– General Stark
Both Lumet's Fail Safe and #Kubrick's #ColdWar comedy came out in 1964, right after the #CubaCrisis. The world was awash with the realisation that the bomb, The Bomb, wasn't merely proverbial flexing. And when crisis happens, there are two options. One is to laugh, the other is to grasp. Sadly for Lumet, and the world, his Fail Safe was released while everyone was still too busy chuckling.
