Sidney Lumet: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) (Paperback)

~ Joanna E. Rapf (Editor) "Lumet was a child actor on Broadway, appearing in such plays as My Heart's in the Highlands, Dead End, and The Eternal Road..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Prince of the City, Sidney Lumet (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Like his then-colleagues Martin Ritt, Franklin Schaffner, Arthur Penn, and John Frankenheimer, Lumet earned his director's stripes in early 1950s live TV. A TV-to-movie adaptation, 12 Angry Men, was his first film. Thereafter, he didn't look back to TV until the 1990s, or at all to the New York stage, which was his professional home as an actor since childhood. His successes include theater adaptations (Long Day's Journey into Night, The Seagull); gritty urban dramas (The Pawnbroker, Dog Day Afternoon); topical melodramas (Fail Safe, Network); and many onetime forays into disparate genres. High-toned critics say he lacks thematic obsessions and stylistic consistency. In the 21 interviews and profiles gathered here, he responds to such critics but mostly talks about his professional life and work pointedly, articulately, and intelligently. He reveals why he is known as an actors' director and says so much about lighting and cameras that he sets his film-technique bona fides in stone. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

Sidney Lumet (b. 1924) is considered one of the most gifted and socially conscious American filmmakers of his generation. His best-known movies--including Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, 12 Angry Men, and Network--have garnered him an Honorary Academy Award in 2005, multiple Oscar nominations for Best Director, the D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement, and numerous other tributes.

This book features over twenty interviews with the director, including an interview conducted by the editor for this volume. One of the few mainstream directors who works outside of Hollywood, Lumet discusses how his home base, New York City, fuels his films. Candid, outspoken and occasionally brash, Lumet talks passionately and clearly about his work with great actors (among them Al Pacino, Faye Dunaway, River Phoenix, and Sean Connery) and acclaimed screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky.

Insisting that moviemaking is collaborative, Lumet often notes his determination to find styles that serve the many different kinds of stories he has told, such as the social drama The Pawnbroker, the crime films Prince of the City and Serpico, the intimate family piece Garbo Talks, the play adaptation Long Day's Journey into Night, and the television series 100 Centre Street.

Joanna E. Rapf is professor of English and of film and video studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. She is the author of On the Waterfront and Buster Keaton: A Bio-Bibliography, and her work has appeared in Film Quarterly, Literature/Film Quarterly, Post Script, and Journal of Popular Culture.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (November 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578067243
• ISBN-13: 978-1578067244
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
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• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,404,335 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)