Dog Days (1975)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Dog days |
| Original title | Dog Day Afternoon |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1975 |
| length | 119 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Sidney Lumet |
| script | Frank Pierson |
| production |
Martin Bregman Martin Elfand |
| camera | Victor J. Kemper |
| cut | Dede Allen |
| occupation | |
| |
Dog Days is an American film directed by Sidney Lumet from 1975. It is about a failed bank robbery and is based on a true story.
action
The film begins with various street scenes from New York on a very hot summer day. Shortly before closing time, three men enter a New York bank in Brooklyn and draw their guns, but lose control of the situation at the beginning of the attack. Armed with an M14 rifle , the leader, Sonny Wortzig, instructs an accomplice to use his revolver to keep the bank’s frightened security guard in check. The accomplice is completely overwhelmed by the situation and decides - with Sonny's consent - to leave the bank. Sonny has to run after him to get the car keys. When Sonny finally has the safe cleared out by a bank employee, there are only 1,100 dollars . Meanwhile, his other accomplice, Sal, keeps the bank tellers in check. When Sonny burns the list with the IDs of the checks and bills, the smoke caught the attention of a man in the building opposite.
The arriving police cordoned off the street in front of the bank. Onlookers and television join them. Sonny and his accomplice Sal take the bank employees hostage, but release an asthma sufferer and demand a helicopter and plane to get out of the country. Despite everything, the relationship between the hostage takers and their hostages is relaxed. They all share the same fate, locked in a bank in tropical temperatures.
The hostage-taking and the ongoing media coverage are assuming increasingly absurd proportions, Sonny even wins the sympathy of the crowd when he during a negotiation with the police on Attica! Attica! chanted to draw parallels between the massive and heavily armed police presence and the bloody suppression of the 1971 prison uprising in New York's Attica prison . He also demands a conversation with "his wife". This is not about his divorced wife, with whom he has two children, but about the transsexual Leon, for whom he wants to pay for the genital adjustment operation through the attack . Sal, who also didn't expect the police to come, is also unsettled. When Sonny asks him which country to flee to, he names Wyoming . Sonny names Algeria as a destination.
In a telephone conversation with Leon, Sonny learns that his love is one-sided and that his efforts have been in vain. Sonny writes a loving farewell letter and leaves his money to his wife. In addition, in the letter he demands the military burial due to him as a Vietnam veteran.
Since no helicopter can land in the narrow street, a minibus takes the hostages and hostages to the airport at night. Sonny, Sal and the hostages are already at the end of their tether due to the siege and the heat. On the apron of the airport, Sonny releases another hostage as agreed. Then the police manage a diversion - the FBI officer behind the wheel of the vehicle shoots Sal, who is sitting behind him, with a revolver hidden in his armrest, whereupon Sonny surrenders immediately. In the credits it says that Sonny is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison, his wife lives on welfare and that Leon now lives as a woman in New York.
The true story
On August 22, 1972, John Wojtowicz, a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran, and 18-year-old Salvatore "Sal" Naturale attacked Chase Manhattan Bank in Brooklyn , New York, taking the manager and several bank employees into their power. The hostage situation lasted over 14 hours. During this time, Wojtowicz stepped onto the street lined with onlookers several times to negotiate with the police. Among other things, he asked for a plane with which he and Sal could leave the country undisturbed for Algeria. On the drive from the crime scene to Kennedy Airport , Naturale was shot and Wojtowicz himself arrested.
The attack and the subsequent hostage-taking was a major media event and was watched live by many people on television.
A short time later, an article by PF Kluge and Thomas Moores appeared in Life Magazine under the title The Boys in the Bank , in which the events were reconstructed and several of the hostages had their say. Many of them described their good relationship with the hostage takers. For example, CEO Robert Barrett spoke of good camaraderie and said he laughed more that day than he did in a whole week.
Wojtowicz testified in court that he only attacked the bank in order to enable his transgender partner Ernest Aron to have sex reassigned. He was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment on April 23, 1973 and parole in 1978.
For the rights to his story, Wojtowicz received $ 7,500 from the production company Warner Bros. In addition, he was awarded a share of one percent in the film's net sales, which he never received and later tried unsuccessfully to sue. With part of the money (2,500 dollars) he financed the sex reassignment of his partner, who later renamed herself Elizabeth Debbie Eden and died in 1987 of complications from her AIDS- related illness.
In a letter to the New York Times in 1975, Wojtowicz was critical of the account of the events in Hundstage , claiming that it was only about 30 percent true. He said that he did not speak to his wife or mother during the hostage-taking. In addition, his wife Carmen Buffalo appears in a completely wrong light. Al Pacinos and Chris Sarandon's acting performance, however, highlighted Wojtowicz positively and described it as accurate .
In January 2006 Wojtowicz died of cancer .
History of origin
script
Frank Pierson made frequent references to PF Kluge and Thomas Moore's article The Boys in the Bank when writing the script . Many of the details mentioned in the report found their way into the film (for example the third bank robber who fled at the beginning of the robbery, the asthma guard, or the pizza delivery for the hostage-takers).
John Wojtowicz was renamed Sonny Wortzik and his partner Ernest Aron was renamed Leon Shermer. Many of the other film characters are also based on real people, such as the bank manager Mulvaney (his real name was Robert Barrett) or the FBI agents.
occupation
When selecting the actors, the casting director Michael Chinich also partly followed the real role models. John Wojtowicz was visually compared with Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman in the Life article , which suggested that the former should be cast. It was Pacino's second collaboration with director Sidney Lumet after Serpico in 1973.
For the role of Sal Naturale, an 18-year-old actor was initially sought, as this would have been the age of the role model, but then they decided on the 40-year-old John Cazale, who had already appeared in the godfather films alongside his good friend Al Pacino had played. Dog Days was Cazale's penultimate film. He died of cancer in 1978.
Filming
Just ten days before filming began, Al Pacino was considering leaving the project because he was concerned about portraying a homosexual. The script provided for a kiss between his role and the transsexual Leon Shermer. According to Frank Pierson, this was a key scene in the film in which Sonny says goodbye to his friend. Pacino refused to play the scene, however, and requested that all sexual references be removed from the script. Frank Pierson, who finally accepted Pacino's concerns, rewrote the script and added the phone call between Leon and Sonny, which was largely improvised by Pacino and Chris Sarandon.
The exterior shots were filmed on the original locations in Brooklyn, the interior of the bank had the director Sidney Lumet recreated in a nearby warehouse. The minimalist plot, which takes place in only a few places, as well as the lack of music contribute significantly to the oppressive and authentic, sometimes grotesquely funny atmosphere of Hundstage .
Although the film is set in the middle of midsummer (even the title Dog Days suggests that it is a very hot day), it was very cold at the time of shooting. When shooting outside, the actors had to put ice cubes in their mouths so that you couldn't see their breath.
Al Pacino often suffered from exhaustion while filming and even collapsed once. After finishing shooting, he retired from the film business for two years, during which time he only played theater.
Others
The theme song Amoreena is by Elton John . Otherwise Hundstage has no background music whatsoever.
The book for the film was written in 1974 by Leslie Waller under the pseudonym Patrick Mann.
The film budget was $ 1.8 million; In the USA alone, the film grossed 50 million US dollars.
In 2000, the artist Pierre Huyghe tried to give another perspective on the events with his two-channel video projection The Third Memory .
In episode 9 of season 5 of the hospital series Dr. House takes a patient hostage to get treatment faster. House asks if acting out dog days is the best way to find a diagnosis.
synchronization
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Sonny Wortzig | Al Pacino | Lutz Mackensy |
| Sal | John Cazale | Andreas Mannkopff |
| Moretti | Charles Durning | Edgar Ott |
| Leon | Chris Sarandon | Joachim Kunzendorf |
| Margaret | Beulah Garrick | |
| Sheldon | James Broderick | Heinz Petruo |
| Jenny | Carol Kane | Cornelia Meinhardt |
Reactions
Dog Days hit US cinemas on September 21, 1975.
The US had just pulled out of Vietnam and the aftermath of the Watergate affair rocked the nation. During this politically explosive time, Lumet's work caused a sensation. Some journalists saw a film of the counterculture in Hundstage and described it as inappropriate and directed against the establishment . This was mainly due to the theming of transsexuality and homosexuality , the mention of the Attica prison uprising and the fact that the bank robber Sonny is a Vietnam veteran.
The film received mostly positive reviews, especially the acting performances of Al Pacino and Chris Sarandon were given appreciation. In the US alone, Hundstage grossed over $ 46 million. The film celebrated its German premiere on March 19, 1976.
Hundstage is now considered a classic of American film and an important representative of New Hollywood cinema of the 1960s and 1970s.
In 2005, documentary filmmaker Walter Stokman made the film Based on a True Story , which documents the story of the bank robbery.
Reviews
“In careful psychological detail, Sidney Lumet exposes the constitution of the perpetrators and the background to their actions, the mechanism of the hostage drama and the way in which the fight against crime works in public. Played oppressively haunting. "
“Because the film brings up no prejudices other than curiosity and the desire to observe, it becomes an unambitious total picture of a city, indeed a world. [...] Al Pacino plays him [Sonny] as a fascinating mixture of fear, helplessness, theatrical pride and a little people cunning that sits laboriously as a mask on benign kitsch. […] Incidentally (if by no means coincidental) the filmed 'gangster drama' […] is one of the most precise sociograms of the New Yorkers: all ethnically separated into unmistakable peculiarities and all united by the dirty streets, the boiling noise, the dilapidated apartment blocks. The director would probably be astonished if he were assumed to have a radical program for his radical view. He just looked carefully where films usually only meet their own prefabricated expectations. "
“Lumet managed to maintain tension for over two hours. There are always dangerous situations, for example when the police tried to get into the building through the back entrance of the bank. The showdown itself puts a tragic end to the act of desperation and leaves a man behind who no longer knows what is actually happening to him. The heat does one more thing to aggravate the tense situation again and again. And at the same time, 'Dog Day Afternoon' demonstrates the helplessness that spreads in such a situation - on all sides and reinforced by the influence of the media, whose influence hardly anyone can or wants to escape. "
Awards
Hundstage won the 1976 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Frank Pierson) and was also nominated for Best Picture , Best Director (Sidney Lumet), Best Actor (Al Pacino), Best Supporting Actor (Chris Sarandon) and Best Editing (Dede Allen) .
At the 1976 Golden Globe Awards , the film received nominations for Best Drama , Best Director , Best Actor , Best Supporting Actor (John Cazale and Charles Durning), Best Young Actor (Chris Sarandon), and Best Screenplay .
Hundstage also received a National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor (Charles Durning), a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay, and a Directors Guild of America Award for Best Director.
It ranks 70th on the list of the American Film Institute's 100 best American thrillers . The line Attica! Attica! came 86th of the 100 best movie quotes.
In 2009 the film was entered into the National Film Registry .
Web links
- Dog days in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Dog days atrotten tomatoes(English)
- Letter from John Wojtowicz to the New York Times
- Dog days at The-Fan.net
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The Life article
- ↑ Background information on the real story
- ^ John Wojtowicz's letter to the New York Times
- ↑ a b IMDb-This-and-That
- ↑ Interview with Fran Pierson
- ↑ http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=dogdayafternoon.htm
- ^ Pierre Huyghe - The Third Memory ; Retrieved July 5, 2017
- ↑ Dog days. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 21, 2016 .
- ↑ Hundstage In: filmzentrale.com, accessed on March 1, 2017.