45 years of the Dog Day Afternoon
On September 21, 1975, Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon" premiered in New York. Two days earlier, on September 19, 1975, this film was presented as part of a competitive screening at the international film festival in Spanish San Sebastian. Neither the film itself nor its director received any awards. The prize was awarded only to the leading actor Al Pacino.
Early the next year, "Dog Day Afternoon" received 7 Golden Globe nominations but won none. In the most important nominations - Best Drama Film and Best Director - Sidney Lumet's film and its director lost, respectively, to the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and its director Milos Forman. And Al Pacino lost to Jack Nicholson. Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" was in the company of losers along with "Dog Day Afternoon". Roughly the same picture was repeated in the dispute for the Oscar.
In the same 1976 "Dog Day Afternoon" received 6 nominations for the British BAFTA Awards, including the most important categories: Best Picture and Best Director. In the Best Film nomination, British film academics "Dog Day Afternoon" preferred Martin Scorsese's film "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." And in the Best Director nomination, Sidney Lumet lost to Stanley Kubrick, the director of the movie "Barry Lyndon". But "Dog Day Afternoon" won two nominations. One of them was received by Al Pacino. Moreover, Al Pacino received this award not for one role, but for two - including the role in the film by Francis Ford Coppola "The Godfather. Part 2." The British film academics were greedy: they could give a prize for each role.
It should be noted that the role in "Dog Day Afternoon" was offered to Al Pacino while he was finishing filming "The Godfather. Part 2." and was terribly exhausted by this work. Therefore, his first decision was to refuse the offer. But when he found out that Sidney Lumet had found a replacement for him in the person of Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino changed his mind and accepted the offer. Well, Al Pacino did not want such a role to go to someone whom he considered his rival in the acting craft.
Dog Day Afternoon has a very close connection to real life. Many people know that the film is based on a real incident that took place on August 22, 1972, when a certain John Wojtowicz, the son of a Polish immigrant, a Vietnam War veteran, together with two friends tried to rob a bank. The need to find funds to pay for a surgery to change the sex of Wojtowicz's "wife" pushed him to this crime. The fact is that a year before the attempted robbery, Wojtowicz met Elizabeth Eden, who was Ernest Aron. He changed his name, but everything else ... However, in spite of everything, Wojtowicz and Eden (Aron) were combined "by legal marriage", but the problem remained. For Eden (Aron), it was a matter of life and death, as evidenced by his (her) suicide attempt with a drug overdose. The attempt failed, but Wojtowicz, fearing that the next similar attempt of a loved one would be successful, decided to take a desperate step.
In addition to the fact that Sidney Lumet's film was based on real events, it itself became a part of real life - filming became a kind of testing ground for practicing real police actions in situations with hostages, which (situations) get out of control and are fraught with panic in the crowd.
Film critics, for the most part, highly praised Sidney Lumet's film. Roger Ebert devoted two reviews to the film. The first one he wrote on January 1, 1975, even before the film was released. In this review, he rated the film with three and a half stars out of four possible, noting the only, in his opinion, drawback - some protraction. In his opinion, the film could well be reduced by 15 minutes. However, in a 2008 review, he notes that "These shots, stolen from reality, establish a bedrock for the film. It's "naturalistic," says the director, Sidney Lumet. I think he means it has the pace and feel of everyday life." And he rated Lumet's film with a maximum of 4 stars, and included it in his list of "Great Movies".
Film audiences also rated "Dog Day Afternoon" very highly. 70% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated Sidney Lumet's film from 8 to 10. Taking this into account and the above, the rating of Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon" was 8.366 according to FilmGourmand, making it 385th in the Golden Thousand.
