Sidney Lumet: Celebrating the centennial of this ground-breaking filmmaker
Sidney Lumet once wrote: “While the goal of all movies is to entertain, the kind of film in which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and set the mental juices flowing. In a film career spanning 50 years, Lumet explored conscience in such classics 1957’s “12 Angry Men,” 1973’s “Serpico,” 1976’s “Network” and 1982’ s “The Verdict.”
Lumet’s New York Times 2011 obit stated: “Social issues set his mental juices flowing and his best films not only probed the consequences of prejudice, corruption and betrayal, but also celebrated individual acts of courage.” And one should also add redemption to that list. He was always in a New York state of mind. Of the 38 films he made, 29 were shot in New York. Lumet earned four Oscar nominations for best director- “12 Angry Men,” which marked his feature debut, 1975’s “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Network” and “The Verdict”-and shared another nomination with Jay Presson Allen for the adapted screenplay for 1981’s “Prince of the City.” But he never won a competitive Oscar, Lumet was given an honorary Oscar in 2005 for what the New York Times decried “a consolation prize for a lifetime of neglect.” In a 2007 videotaped interview, he noted “I wanted one, damn it, and I felt I deserved it.”
Lumet was born a century ago on June 25 to Yiddish theater actor. And Lumet quickly followed in their footsteps; he quite literally was a Broadway baby making his Great White Way debut in 1935’s “Dead End.” He turned to directing after World War II and in 1950 was hired by CBS to direct live TV. Lumet, along with the likes of future Oscar-winners as Franklin Schaffner, Delbert Mann, George Roy Hill, as well as John Frankenheimer, dominated the new medium.
Lumet also directed three plays on Broadway, none of which were hits.Throughout his career, Lumet would return to his roots directing film adaptations of play written by likes of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.
He was already an established film director when he helmed the exceptional 1960 two-part syndicated TV production of O’Neill’s 1939 drama “The Iceman Cometh,” about a group of alcoholics and prostitutes who exist at a saloon and rooming house in New York City. The outwardly successful and now sober member named Hickey returns to the dead-end establishment with a major secret. Jason Robards, who earned rave reviews for the 1956 off-Broadway revival of the play, reprises his role as Hickey. Also featured in the cast is a very young Robert Redford.
Two years later saw the release of his superb adaptation of O’Neill’s 1956 semi-autobiographical Broadway hit “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” which won the best play Tony as well as the Pulitzer Prize and revolves around the dysfunctional Tyrone family including the aging ham actor father, the drugged addled mother and their two troubled adult sons-one an alcoholic and the other suffering from TB.
Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Robards, who had earned a Tony nomination as the eldest son on Broadway, and former child star Dean Stockwell, were cast as this doomed family. Made on a shoestring budget, Lumet rehearsed his actor for three weeks before going in front of the cameras. The result is extraordinary especially Hepburn who earned her ninth Oscar nomination as the addict Mary Tyrone. In fact, the cast was awarding best actress and actor at the Cannes Film Festival. Legendary film critic Pauline Kael was so taken by Hepburn. She proclaimed her “our greatest tragedienne.”
Though Lumet didn’t “open up” the action of “Long Day’s Journey,” that wasn’t the case with 1960’s ‘The Fugitive Kind,” starring Oscar-winners Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward and Maureen Stapleton. Though it is set in Mississippi, Lumet shot the interiors and exteriors in New York. Tennessee Williams retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, “The Fugitive Kind” has a lengthy history.
Williams originally wrote it as “Battle of Angels” in 1939. It never made it to Broadway. So, he rewrote it as “Orpheus Descending,” which opened in New York in 1957 where it flopped. Williams and Mead Roberts adapted his play adding numerous characters and scenes. Brando, who earned a million bucks for his participation, plays a sexy drifter named Valentine “Snakeskin” Xavier, who wants to change his life where he was known as an “entertainer” in clubs in New Orleans. He hopes his luck will change in a small Mississippi town, but soon finds himself embroiled in the lives of three women-the fiery, unhappily married Lady Torrance (Magnani), Carol (Woodward), a free-spirited with a drinking problem; and Vee (Stapleton), a plain-Jane married woman. Ironically, Stapleton played Lady Torrance on Broadway. And if Brando’s snakeskin jacket looks familiar, Nicolas Cage wears a replica in 1990’s “Wild at Heart.”
Lumet didn’t get a chance to do his usual major rehearsal before filming began (Magnani refused) so after a quick three-day run through filming began. Magnani was furious when she learned that secretly Lumet was having rehearsals with Brando. And there was further tension when Brando allegedly slurred his words to antagonize the Italian actress who learned her lines phonetically. Despite the problems, the performances are striking. The New York Times noted:” Mr. Brando and Miss Magnani…being fine and intelligent performers…play upon deep emotional chords.” Other reviewers weren’t so kind to the film suggesting he wander away from New York City stories. Despite the mixed reviews, the film has grown in reputation over the decades.
With the arrival of the X rating for motion pictures in the late 1960s several known directors took full advantage of the end of the Production Code-including John Schlesinger (“Midnight Cowboy”) and Stanley Kubrick (“A Clockwork Orange”). And Lumet went the X-rated route with 1970’s “The Last of the Mobile Hot Shots,” based on the 1968 Williams’ Broadway flop “The Seven Descents of Myrtle,” which starred Estelle Parsons who had earned a Tony nomination. Lynn Redgrave, James Coburn and Robert Hooks star in this adaptation penned by Gore Vidal featuring a score by Quincy Jones and cinematography by the esteemed James Wong Howe. And this time around, Lumet shot the film in Louisiana. Coburn plays the last legit heir of a crumbling plantation who also is dying of lung cancer. Redgrave is the hooker who married him on a TV show; and Hooks is Coburn’s healthy and sexy black half- brother. The result?
Look no further than the New York Times review: “Sidney Lumet, who improved Williams’ ‘Orpheus Descending…’ has directed this film with a kind of desperate extravagant theatricality, which can’t hide the fact that the original play, adapted and expanded by Gore Vidal, might have been written by Ronnie Graham as a sketch for ‘New Faces of 1952.’”
Here are other films based on plays and musicals Lumet directed:
“A View from the Bridge” (1962) based on Arthur Miller’s 1955 play
“The Sea Gull” (1968) based on Anton Chekhov’s 1895 play first performed in 1896
“Child’s Play” (1972) based on the 1970 mystery drama by Robert Marasco which won five Tony Awards
“Equus” (1977) based on Peter Shaffer’s drama which won the Tony for best play in 1975.
“The Wiz” (1978) based on the 1975 multi-Tony Award-winning black musical version of “The Wizard of Oz.”
“Deathtrap” (1982) based on the long-running Tony nominated 1978 mystery thriller by Ira Levin
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