The Lumet interviews are listed chronologically, beginning with Peter Bogdanovich and concluding with Joanna Rapf For the film scholar there is not a great deal of "new" material as the interviews have appeared previously in Film Quarterly , Films and Filming , Films in Review , and on the Internet. Both provide an interesting French perspective on Lumet's work. What's True? Film scholars may find this collection of essays interesting, however, they are highly recommended as a resource for students exploring the world of the film "auteur.
Many admire Sidney Lumet's career, and Joanna E. Rapf's book will add to the tributes surrounding one of America's most distinguished filmmakers. Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide.
He has been nominated for an Academy Award three times, and he has a solid reputation in the business for bringing pictures in on time and under budget. He has the rare if not unprecedented distinction of becoming a successful movie director without ever having to abandoned his New York base for the hills of Hollywood.
Still, Lumet is caught in a paradox. Though he is well respected, he knows the public will not line up at the box office for movies with his name on them the way they will for those of, say, Woody Allen. As for the critics, Lumet's crazy-quilt career has earned him a dubious honor: He is one director that Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris agree on -- they both dislike his films.
A veteran of twenty-five years of filmmaking, Lumet still considers himself, at fifty-eight, a student. I don't believe in waiting for the masterpiece. Masterful subject matter only comes up rarely. The point is, there's something to advance your technique in every movie you do.
Adapted for the screen from Barry Reed's novel by playwright David Mamet, it portrays a broken-down, alcoholic Irish-Catholic lawyer Paul Newman who stumbles upon one last chance to redeem himself, both professionally -- through a clear-cut but difficult-to-prove medical malpractice suit against a large Catholic hospital in Boston -- and personally -- with a mysterious beauty played by Charlotte Rampling. Its courtroom setting hearkens back to Twelve Angry Men , Lumet's first picture, and the character played by Newman brilliantly, it must be said , wrapped in a blanket of furious, self-ordained solitude, recalls similar little-guy-against-the- system characters in Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon , and Prince of the City.
As usual for Lumet, the film is studded with strong performances, even in the small roles -- Lindsay Crouse and Julie Bovasso have several memorable scenes -- and suffused with social commentary, exposing the subtle ways in which an insensitive institution corrupts the individuals who do its bidding and attempts to crush those who won't.
For his part, Newman is playing down the film's implicit social commentary, partly because the role intrigues him so much. It's not anti-hospital, or anti-Catholic, or anti-lawyer. It's the story of how a man redeems himself. He becomes unglued not because he's bad -- he's no worse than most people -- but because he can't help himself and he can't be helped by those who see what's happening to him. It's such a relief to play something like this instead of those strong, stalwart guys.
This guy is ordinary; he's no better than he should be. Because it's about people, especially Paul's character, who are trapped in the past, there's nothing new in it. There isn't a modern building or a modern piece of furniture in it. Everything is old, from another time, as if time stopped for them a long while ago. And from a lighting point of view, we worked on the basis of great warmth, highly directional lighting. We spent a whole day analyzing the way he was treating background, the way he was treating foreground, where light came from, the way he was treating surfaces.
Then we applied that to the picture, and the result is just extraordinary. Now, I could have done The Verdict totally realistically, naturalistically, if I wanted to. But I wanted something fresh for myself. I think that's why" -- he knocks on the underside of his desk -- "in total the work is slowly getting better, because I don't settle for one way of doing it. I mention this to him, using his description of The Verdict 's visual scheme as an example of something that distinguishes an artistic director from an indifferent one.
Everybody who's good has been doing that for years anyway. So all the auteur theory did was make what had been natural self-conscious. It's had a bad effect on the young movie people. You see, I can't even use the words 'film' or 'cinema. But his stylized approach to The Verdict is nothing if not self-conscious. Doesn't that make Sidney Lumet, however reluctantly, an auteur? They kiss and laugh -- and go to work, of course. Its corridors will serve as those of the courthouse; most of the exteriors will later be filmed at the studio.
This morning is devoted to shooting a short scene of Newman leaving the courtroom and glaring at Rampling across a grand second-floor rotunda. Lumet is in his element. Wearing his customary blue work shirt and jeans and smoking Camels, he sparks activity in everyone on the set.
He would pop up in a video essay here and there, but no single piece focused on him as an auteur and the knowledge he could share with filmmakers.
To rectify this, I've compiled a few pieces of advice by the man himself, most taken from his wonderful book, Making Movies. Determine what your movie is about. Find its theme. According to Lumet, this will affect how a film is cast, edited, shot, and scored.
If an opportunity to direct a feature film comes your way, Lumet encourages you to take it. I personally think that we sometimes put off directing our first feature film because of fears or uncertainty. We spend time learning as much as we can without ever really taking the first leap. Those positive emotions are the ones we have to latch onto and move forward. Rehearsal is a key component to any production, with Lumet remarking that he would rehearse for 2 weeks, feeling that the more rehearsed you were, the freer you would be to improvise on set.
The quicker you can adapt to a new idea or problem, the better. The need to improvise is something that will usually happen on a film set anyway! By Robert Koehler. A film by … who? Though the fury — usually spurred by screenwriters — over that pesky creature known as the possessory credit has calmed a bit, it remains a complicated topic that can stir up as much argument as can be found inside an Iowa caucus group.
In one corner are directors who are perfectly happy as far as we know directing. In another corner are writer-directors who tend to view the filmmaking process as a continual flow from the page to the camera to the editing room, guided in principle by a single intention. Seen together, these movies can buttress either side of the film-by-whom?
Home Film Awards.
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