The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Sidney Lumet · a film · 1975 · about 125 minutes · written by Frank Pierson, from the Life magazine article “The Boys in the Bank” by P. F. Kluge and Thomas Moore · Warner Bros.
Mode
Crime film as public spectacle; the New York realist manner turned on a true event, farce by day and intimacy by night
Mythos
The outlaw cheered by the people, inverted; the trickster who is also the scapegoat; the silent double; the old law and the new
Phase
One day, from a mid-afternoon robbery that fails in its first minutes, through the siege by day and the calls and the will by night, to the runway in the small hours
Presentation
Feature film in colour, about 125 minutes, shot on location; no composed score, one song over the opening and location sound after it; closing title cards on the real men
Register
Hot, comic and frantic in the street; quiet and almost still at night; dread on the tarmac
Scale
One bank, one street, one man’s obligations, a city as a crowd and the state in two forms
Governing Proposition
Two amateurs rob a Brooklyn bank on a summer afternoon, find almost no money in it, and are surrounded within minutes; the robbery becomes a siege, and the siege a show, watched by a crowd and by television into the night. The wager of the film is that a crime made public spectacle draws everyone into playing a part, the robber first, and that the spectacle is ended at last by a power that does not perform.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film opens on Brooklyn in August heat: a montage of the city, with no dialogue, under Elton John’s “Amoreena”, the one piece of music the film has. It ends at the bank door. This is the city before it becomes a stage. Then the robbery. A rifle comes out of a gift box. Stevie loses his nerve and leaves before the vault is open, and Sonny lets him go. The vault holds little, since the day’s cash has gone. Sonny burns the bank’s register in a wastebasket. Within about the first fifteen minutes of the film the police have surrounded the bank. The plan has failed in the first minutes, and the film begins.
Warner Bros. released the film in the United States in September 1975. Frank Pierson wrote it from “The Boys in the Bank”, an article by P. F. Kluge and Thomas Moore published in Life in 1972, on the robbery of a Chase Manhattan branch in Gravesend, Brooklyn, by John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile on 22 August 1972; his screenplay won the Academy Award. Martin Bregman and Martin Elfand produced, Victor J. Kemper photographed in colour, and Dede Allen edited. Al Pacino plays Sonny Wortzik, John Cazale Sal, Charles Durning Detective Sergeant Moretti, James Broderick the FBI agent Sheldon, Chris Sarandon Leon, Penelope Allen the head teller Sylvia and Sully Boyar the manager Mulvaney.
The inheritance is the heist film, whose pleasure is the plan and the score, and the New York realist crime film in which Lumet had already worked, Serpico (1973) above all, with the same star and producer. The turns are real. The heist fails at once and the film is about what follows; it keeps the facts and the outcome of an event three years old; and no score tells the audience how to feel. But location shooting, overlapping improvised speech and a documentary eye were Lumet’s proven path, and the New Hollywood had already made the sympathetic outlaw its own. The construction under the turns is classical. Much of the wager was placed on ground already won.
Movement II
Sonny goes out to the barricade and leads the crowd in a chant: “Attica! Attica!” The name of a prison turns a bank robbery into a referendum on police violence, and the crowd, which has nothing to do with him, cheers. He throws money over the barricade. For a time a man who could not find the cash in a vault is the centre of a city. The robber has become a performer and the street his audience, and the film has found its subject.
The form carries it. One day and nearly one place make the bank a stage and the street its auditorium. Inside, in the cramped and sweating interior, people come to know one another; outside, in the open street, they are only images, and the cutting moves between the two without losing the line of the day. There is no score after the opening song: the crowd’s roar and the telephone’s ring do the work music would do. Durning’s Moretti bargains at the barricade, sweating, an authority losing its hold, and a delivery boy who hands in pizzas is made a celebrity for it.
What the film brings into the open is plain: a crime made spectacle draws everyone into it, the crowd, the police, television and the criminal first. It is disclosed beside other truths, of class anger, of a love the crowd will not accept, of the state’s cool violence, and the film, faithful to its event, sets them side by side rather than fusing them. Chinatown (8.6), the year before, makes one meaning of city and family; this film keeps its meanings apart. And the middle of the day repeats its beats, Sonny out to the barricade, the cheer, the bargaining, more often than the argument needs.
Movement III
Sal is the other robber, and he barely speaks. Cazale plays him in stillness, and the threat of the siege lives in him: he is the one who will not be taken alive. Asked to name a country they might fly to, he answers “Wyoming”. It is a laugh in the bank and an image of the film’s whole situation, an elsewhere that does not exist, named by a man who has nowhere to go. He refuses to be called homosexual. He is Sonny’s silent double, and the end will fall on him.
Inside the bank the hostages are a workplace held hostage: Sylvia, the head teller, Mulvaney, the manager, and the tellers, among them Carol Kane. Their allegiances shift through the day, and the film yields more on each return in watching them shift. Sonny cares for them as he cares for everyone, and that care is part of what traps him. Some of their business is loose: the tellers’ jokes and banter are texture, and the film could spare some of them.
The film summons an old pattern, the outlaw cheered by the people, the line of Bonnie and Clyde, and turns it over: the outlaw is an amateur, the loot is small, and the cheering crowd is a television audience that will turn when it learns why he robbed. Sonny is trickster and scapegoat in one, and Moretti’s sweat against Sheldon’s calm comes near a pattern of the old law and the new. But the realism resists construction. The figures stay particular, and the archetype is atmosphere rather than structure. The register resists height in the same way: hot, comic and frantic, it rises seldom by day.
Movement IV
Night comes, and the register turns from farce to intimacy. Leon is brought to the barbershop across the street, which the police use as their command post, and Sonny speaks to him by telephone: two people who cannot help each other, talking across a street. Then Sonny calls Angie, his wife, at home. Two households the money was meant to serve are bound to the bank by a telephone line, and the motive is out: the robbery was for money for Leon’s sex-reassignment surgery. When the crowd learns it, it turns.
Sonny dictates his will to a teller. He leaves money to Leon and to Angie. The scene is played almost without movement, and the reason for the robbery, stated at last, is a list of people he wants to provide for. The robber is the man who cares for everyone, two wives, a mother, played by Judith Malina, his hostages and his partner, and he is held captive by that care. Leon’s love and his need are shown without a sermon in a studio picture of 1975. Sarandon is fine in the call; in his scene with the police he is played more broadly than the rest.
Through one man’s obligations the film holds a good deal: the state in the police, the FBI and the prison the chant names; the media and the crowd as a public; two families; sexuality and gender; a workplace; money, class and debt. It does not hold the sacred, history beyond the moment, a consciousness seen from within, or the city as a society rather than a crowd. Its portrayal of Leon and of the crowd’s turn has been re-read as attitudes changed, credited for its seriousness and questioned, and that argument is part of the film’s life. Much of the return, though, is to the event and the performances; the film’s own meaning, once seen, is largely stated.
Movement V
The FBI has taken the case from the police. Sheldon is calm where Moretti sweated, and the film turns on the change from a power that bargains in public to one that does not perform. A limousine takes Sonny and Sal to Kennedy Airport. The tarmac is empty and the cameras and the crowd are gone, and so the killing can happen. The engines run; Murphy, the FBI driver, played by Lance Henriksen, brings a pistol from under the seat; Sal is shot; Sonny is held over the hood of the car, and the sound of jets passes over the silence. It is the film’s summit, and the end of the performance.
Title cards close the film with the fates of the real men, a step outside the film’s own law into documentary. The film itself survives whole, in its theatrical cut, continuously seen for fifty-one years, its chant known well beyond those who have seen it. The siege and negotiation films that followed came out of it, Spike Lee’s Inside Man (2006) openly so, and Pacino’s and Cazale’s work holds a lasting place in the study of screen acting. Its reach is wider in presence than in redirection: the sympathetic, failed criminal belonged to the decade, and the film perfected a manner more than it reorganised the medium.
The film stands in Tier III, and what holds it there is plain. Its myth is evoked and never built; its heights gather at night and at the end of a register that is mostly nervous comedy; its truths stand side by side and are not fused; its swerve was made on a proven path; its middle repeats itself. Against that stand a law that governs farce and execution alike, a form in which a day becomes theatre and theatre ends in a killing, and a making that bears weight, above all in two performances. One day, from an afternoon heist that fails in minutes to a runway in the small hours, held whole.
Act III · The Twelve
About 125 minutes over one day, and the plot is a trap whose springs are set in its first minutes. Stevie loses his nerve and leaves; the vault holds little, the day’s cash gone; Sonny burns the bank’s register in a wastebasket. From then on much is compelled: the siege requires the crowd, and the crowd Sonny’s performance; the will dictated at night states at last why the robbery was attempted; the calls to Angie and to Leon show whom the money was for. The subtractive test bites in the middle of the day, which repeats its beats, Sonny out to the barricade, the crowd’s cheer, Moretti’s bargaining, more often than the argument needs; the tellers’ jokes and the pizza delivery are texture rather than necessity.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The disclosure can be stated and it holds: a crime becomes a public spectacle in which everyone, crowd, police, television and the criminal himself, plays a part, and the spectacle is ended by a power that does not perform. A crowd cheers a man it does not know; the chant of Attica turns a bank robbery into a referendum on police violence; a delivery boy becomes a celebrity for handing in pizzas. Beneath it lies a second truth: the robber is held captive by his care for everyone, two wives, a mother, his hostages, his partner. What holds the figure: the media satire, the queer love, the class anger and the state’s cool violence stand side by side, and the film, faithful to its event, does not fuse them into one meaning.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The register is hot, comic and frantic, and elevation is not its usual mode. When the film rises it rises in two ways. In public: Sonny at the barricade leading the chant, the crowd surging, money thrown over the barricade, a man made briefly the centre of a city. In private: the will dictated to a teller at night, played almost still, and the telephone call with Leon, two people who cannot help each other speaking across a street. The airport is the summit, and it is dread: the empty tarmac, the engines, the pistol, Sonny held over the hood as the jets pass. What holds the axis among the lowest is frequency and kind: most of the length is nervous comedy, and the heights gather at night and at the end.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The myth is evoked rather than built. The film summons the American outlaw cheered by the people, the line of Bonnie and Clyde, and inverts it: the outlaw is an amateur, the loot is small, and the cheering crowd is a television audience that turns when it learns why he robbed. Sonny is trickster and scapegoat in one, a man who makes himself the centre of the city and is sacrificed, through Sal, to restore its order. Sal is the silent double; his answer “Wyoming”, asked to name a country to fly to, is comedy and an image of an elsewhere that does not exist. What holds the axis among the lowest: the realism resists construction, the figures stay particular, and the archetype is atmosphere, not structure.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The inheritance is the heist film, whose pleasure is the plan and the score, and the New York realist crime film in which Lumet had already worked, Serpico (1973) above all, with the same star and producer. The turns are real. The robbery fails in its first minutes and the film is about what follows; it keeps the facts and the outcome of an event three years old; it puts at the centre of a studio picture a motive, money for a lover’s sex-reassignment surgery, and a leading star of the day playing a married bisexual man without caricature; and no score tells the audience how to feel. What holds it well below the bar: the method was Lumet’s proven path, the New Hollywood had made the sympathetic outlaw its own, and the construction is classical.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Would a different form change what the film knows? In large part. The near-unity of time and place makes the bank a stage and the street its auditorium, so that the knowledge that the event has become theatre is carried by the form: the cut between the sweating interior, where people come to know one another, and the open street, where they are only images. With no score, the crowd’s roar and the telephone’s ring do the work music would do. Night turns the register from farce to intimacy, and the airport, the first open space, moves the action from the city’s theatre to the state’s, where no crowd watches. What holds it: the siege told in sequence is partly given by the event, and the telephone scenes could take other forms with little loss.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Fifty-one years of return are evidence. The film has been taken up on several lines: as a study of media spectacle, cited again when later sieges were televised; as an early and serious studio portrayal of a gay and transgender love, re-read as attitudes changed, credited for its seriousness and questioned for how it plays Leon and the crowd’s turn; as a document of New York in its worst decade and of the anger the chant names; and as a summit of Pacino’s and Cazale’s acting. Formally it yields on return in the hostages’ shifting allegiances. What holds it at the bar of the Universal Minimum and no higher: much of the return is to the event and the performances, and the film’s own meaning, once seen, is largely stated.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Field: American cinema of the 1970s, a decade crowded with films that moved it. The intrinsic force is real: the film made the hostage siege a form, a crime told as a live media event watched by a crowd and by the camera within it, and made a botched robbery a vehicle for social disclosure; it put a queer love at the centre of a mainstream crime film as motive, not menace. It perfected the New York realist manner more than it reorganised what film could do. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the siege and negotiation films that followed, Spike Lee’s Inside Man (2006) openly in its line; the chant in common speech, quotation and parody; a lasting place in the study of screen acting. The turn to the failed, sympathetic criminal it shares with the decade, and its reach is wider in presence than in redirection.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Survival is weighed over fifty-one years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the film survives as released, in its theatrical cut, nothing lost and nothing replaced, and restorations for home video repair it without revising it. Presence has been continuous and wide: repertory, television, every home format, teaching in film and acting programmes, and a scene and a chant known well beyond those who have seen the film. It is short of the widest presence a film can have, and its fame rests much on its star. The surface is fixed to 1972 Brooklyn by design, Attica, the hair and the heat, and it ages as period and document, not as fashion; the colour photography of its decade is the smallest charge.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Command of the medium, and the making bears weight. Al Pacino’s Sonny is a man improvising a self from minute to minute, charming, panicked, generous and exhausted, held together across a day. John Cazale’s Sal, nearly silent, carries threat and pathos in stillness; Charles Durning’s Moretti sweats out authority losing its hold. Lumet stages the crowd, the barricade and the cramped bank with a control that reads as accident; Dede Allen’s cutting keeps inside and outside in tension; Victor J. Kemper moves from the street’s white glare to the dim fluorescent bank at night. The decision against a score is exact. What holds the figure is unevenness: the middle sags, some hostage business is loose, the airport plan is laid out briskly, and Chris Sarandon’s Leon, fine in the call, is played broadly in his scene with the police.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the opening comedy, a rifle hidden in a gift box, a partner who quits before the vault is open, a robber who cannot find the money; and Sal dead on the runway. One law governs both: an amateur improvising a performance before an audience is met, in the end, by a power that does not improvise. Sonny’s bargaining, his turns at the door, his calls and his will are improvisations, and the crowd, the hostages and the police are his audience until the FBI, which refuses to play, takes over. The range runs from farce to love scene to execution, and the tone shifts without breaking. What holds it: the pizza boy’s fame and some crowd antics lean toward a broader satire than the rest obeys, and the closing title cards step out of the film’s law into a documentary epilogue.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Judged on what a film of about 125 minutes, bound to one day and three places, holds. The state in two forms, the city police and the FBI, and in the prison the chant names; the media and the crowd as a public; the family in Sonny’s wife and children, his mother, and Leon, a second marriage; sexuality and gender in Leon’s need and in Sal’s refusal to be called homosexual; labour in the tellers and the manager, a workplace held hostage; money and class in the small loot, the crowd’s anger and the debt that drives him. The plot integrates them: one man’s obligations become a public event the state ends. What holds it low: the sacred is absent, history is the moment and not its depth, consciousness is Sonny’s seen from outside, and the city enters as a crowd rather than a society.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.7, then The Made at 8.2 and The Inner Law at 8.1. A film whole in its theatrical cut and continuously seen for fifty-one years, its chant known beyond those who have seen it; a making that bears weight, above all in Pacino’s Sonny and Cazale’s Sal, with the decision against a score exact; and one law, an amateur’s improvised performance met by a power that does not improvise, governing farce, love scene and execution.
Limiting Dimension
The Sublime and The Archetypal Deep at 7.2: a hot, comic and frantic register whose heights gather at night and at the end, and the myth of the cheered outlaw and the scapegoat evoked as atmosphere, never built. Then The Encompassed at 7.3, the state, the media, the family, sexuality, labour and money held through one man’s day, with the sacred absent and the city a crowd rather than a society; and The Bottomless Well and Pressure on Tradition at 7.5, a return given largely to the event and the performances, and a reach wider in presence than in redirection.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5, by three tenths. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.0, The Made at 8.2, The Inner Law at 8.1, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.7 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 7.8, The Swerve at 7.6, Pressure on Tradition at 7.5 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.2 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Sublime, 7.2, and The Archetypal Deep, 7.2, both below 7.5; Pressure on Tradition and The Bottomless Well meet it exactly at 7.5, and The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.3. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.7, from a sum of 92.9, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Dog Day Afternoon as released by Warner Bros. in the United States in September 1975: the theatrical cut, about 125 minutes (reference sources give 124 or 125), in colour; restorations for home video are repair and are not judged as a version. Directed by Sidney Lumet; written by Frank Pierson from the Life magazine article “The Boys in the Bank” by P. F. Kluge and Thomas Moore (1972); produced by Martin Bregman and Martin Elfand; photographed by Victor J. Kemper; edited by Dede Allen; no composed score, with Elton John’s “Amoreena” over the opening and location sound after it. With Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, James Broderick, Chris Sarandon, Penelope Allen, Sully Boyar, Susan Peretz, Judith Malina, Carol Kane and Lance Henriksen. The film is drawn from the robbery of a Chase Manhattan branch in Gravesend, Brooklyn, by John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile on 22 August 1972. No print or script was consulted. Dialogue is quoted only where certain, two lines in all; other lines, the exact order of minor beats and the length of scenes are not given. Details that could not be verified are not given, among them what first drew attention to the bank, Sonny’s past employment, the film’s entry in the National Film Registry, and later documentary and writing on the real men and women behind it.