The Movie DOG DAY AFTERNOON Sidney Lumet Directed,Was Shot On One Location, Almost Entirely
[This post not yet proofread nor edited.]
Lead actor, Al Pacino, was in nearly every single scene of the film. Imagine how much acting energy, how deep and full his inner resources…
It was at a time in his acting career, when Al Pacino was operating on pure acting genius. This movie changed my life, and I hadn’t realized that ever, until sitting down to write about this movie, today. And, of course, the filmography of the wonderful director, Sidney Lumet.
When I first saw DOG DAY AFTERNOON, I was in college in New Orleans. As a literature major, I had just began an acting class, because they didn’t have a playwriting curriculum. Their literature department was devoid of artistry, inspiration, too; and as interesting as New Orleans can be, I wasn’t finding any artistic pulse while there. Nowhere on campus, surely; no such current.)
I had wanted to act, when I was a little girl, but then I let it go. I loved books, and writing, and that was the path I was on. That is, until I saw DOG DAY AFTERNOON.
With lead actor, Al Pacino. Directed by Sidney Lumet.
To really know me, in the years subsequently; you’d have to know how much I love the art of acting. It flows in my veins.
DOG DAY AFTERNOON, and I think especially, Pacino’s acting performance, on that balmy humid New Orleans afternoon in the dark sanctuary of an air conditioned movie theater; shined a light on something that I hadn’t seen before inside myself. Something that is such a part of me, that it is one of my own defining characteristics.
A love affair, and passion, that has never subsided, or waned. Romances with men have come and gone, in my life, raged and subsided. But the passion for acting and the art of it, has never lost it’s fury and it’s force. It’s power that instead of being outside of me, is within me and I do believe, it will excite me forever.
This is an acting scene inside of a movie that is as real and honest as they come. Or rather, as movies used to be made. And valued.
And as acting used to be revered, attempted, and sometimes, a reality of which was sometimes attained. Living and breathing, and breathing hard. Only when from an organic, in the moment source; of course. And only from an actor who had such a force of lifefullness, and trust in the authenticity of emotion, and interest in the way of humans.
I left Tulane, as soon as I could transfer to NYU. It wasn’t about the school as much as being in that city, at that time of my life. Where the arts were. And where the life was, in its realest, strongest, most authentically immersive form. Where nothing but in your face truth, and reality, were acceptible.
What a time. What a city. What a magnificent art form, is acting; present and baring and as real as any art form can be…right in the moment of experience.
Al Pacino is playing Sonny, yes. But as a human being, he is experiencing the strongest, most passionate feelings that are possible. Fearlessly, Pacino expresses those feelings, from moment of inception. As the emotions happen, inside himself; they come outside of him, expressed in real time. In real force. In an honest, authentic, powerful eruption.
Yes, it does suit the script and the subtext of the character’s massive, pent up, frustrations, that got him to this bank, this street in Brooklyn, in the first place. (And it is a true story.) But it is Al Pacino’s own lifefulness, his own emotional truth and force of it, and fearlessness about sharing it, revealing it; that makes this movie so spellbinding, so interactive, so authentically awesome. Pure.
Back then, it looked like all movies were going to continue forward with nothing but greater and greater socio-cultural revelation…
And with acting that was all about showing all that we all feel underneath it all, in varying degrees.
That didn’t happen. Not in our films, our film culture. Trends changed.
In retrospect, this acting, in this DOG DAY AFTERNOON scene, shows up a whole lot of other acting in movies…before or since. It shows how rare extremely authentic, organic, in-the-moment, fully experiential, acting is. And, for many actors, it shows how difficult it is to attain this level of acting freedom. (If you are in a beginner or intermediate level scene study class, you know what I mean.)
This acting performance isn’t really a performance at all, it’s an evolving emotional expression, from the soul of a virtuoso. With guts. It’s appropriate for the film, but it’s acting by tapping into and revealing a rare soulful power and passion that Al Pacino naturally had, inside. In the kind of amounts that very few humans have, so that all the audience can experience the bits they realize, and the buried parts they don’t know about, that they have inside their own souls.
When people used to ask me why I eventually quit acting, I used to say that it was because I struggled and climbed up the Mount Everest, yet it dawned on me after 15 or more years, that I never got to play, let alone audition, for any of the kind of roles that I had so lovingly, yet backbreakingly, trained for years for. There was no role that ever came my way which called for me to spread my wings, to use my deepest talents, and that seemed to be deeper than just acting. None that called on any great souful humanity. Weighing the sacrifices, the commitment, the development of the artistry, the looniness of the Industry, all the auditions and ridiculous rejection reasons and of course, the life compromises for a passion and craft that would never really see the light of day.
I guess women actors don’t get to do scenes like this very often. (Except if naked and in a bedroom scene, but even that scenario seems outdated as I type it.)
They just don’t make movies like this much anymore. It’s just different times, in movie-making, and in our culture. With different goals, and different things that matter, perhaps.
The force of human emotion and the authenticity of human experience still is as powerful in this scene; and it never will wane. That s**t never gets old.
And it takes a rare degree of guts. An actor with guts. A director certainly has to have that kind of guts, too; and a mission to tell it like it is, in a revealing way,
I didn’t want or mean to conclude anything, when I started this post. But I am going with my flow here, and whereever it takes me. And this is what I have next to say:
Maybe we all just got too cushy. A person’s gotta take some chances and get off the couch, to go for the guts. To make acting an artistic expression, and experience. And ya gotta care, a lot.
Because anyone who asks the question “What’s in it for me?” is already off the track. There isn’t anything, except of course, for the experience and the artistic expression. The later (inner) realization of artistic achievement.
When film director Sidney Lumet died this week, he took a very special artistic brilliance away with him.
When he made movies, it was about the human experience. About living. It was for life, and about life. For everyone.
I’ll BE EDITING THIS LATER. I”M THINKING IT”S GONNA BE VERY DIFFERENT, AFTER EDITING. PUBLISHING BEFORE PROOFREADING–(time constraints)…
