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Saturday, April 9, 2011

Sidney Lumet: R.I.P.

Sidney Lumet, a director who preferred the streets of New York to the back lots of Hollywood and whose stories of conscience — “12 Angry Men,” “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Verdict,” “Network” — became modern American film classics, died Saturday morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.

In his first film, “12 Angry Men” (1957), he took his cameras into a jury room where the pressure mounted as one tenacious and courageous juror (Henry Fonda) slowly convinced the others that the individual on trial for murder was in fact innocent.

Read the NYT Obit Here.

4 comments:

  1. And don't forget his posh all-star version of Murder on the Orient Express. I think that movie single-handedly created a revival of Christie mania in the late 70s. And I believe it just a few months before her death. Even though Albert Finney's Poirot was bizarre and hardly perfect I still have a great fondness for that movie.

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  2. Yes, I went to the opening of Murder on the Orient Express in L.A. He was there.

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  3. Some directors are a director’s director. Sidney Lumet was a true classic director. A great man. He will be greatly missed. His family have our best wishes and prayers.

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