Dog Day Afternoon

Sidney Lumet’s film came from The Boys in the Bank, a 1972 Life piece by P. F. Kluge and Thomas Moore. Lumet refused a score: he could not reconcile convincing an audience that this really happened with putting music under it. The only music is an Elton John song editor Dede Allen played in the cutting room, from the getaway car radio. The bank was built in a warehouse with movable walls, not a soundstage, so the real Brooklyn street stayed visible through the windows; operators worked on roller skates and in wheelchairs for a newsreel look. The Attica shout, when Pacino steps out to the crowd, was not in Frank Pierson’s script; assistant director Burtt Harris whispered the suggestion just before the take. John Cazale, who plays Sal, was thirty nine; the real Salvatore Naturile was eighteen. Six nominations, for picture, director, Pacino, supporting actor Chris Sarandon and Dede Allen’s editing, produced one Academy Award: Frank Pierson’s original screenplay. John Wojtowicz, who committed the robbery, wrote to the New York Times in 1975 that the film was thirty percent accurate. A good fit if you read the tension off phone calls and crowd noise rather than a score. Not for viewers troubled by the gender affirming surgery behind the robbery being discussed in the words of 1975.