RIP Sidney Lumet

What a great film-maker he was (and by every report I have ever read, a fine and thoroughly decent man). Roger Ebert has put up a thoughtful obituary:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110409/FEATURED/110409988

Lumet's output is equally rich in accepted classics, and re-discoverable neglected films. He started out performing on the Broadway stage as a child, and always had a marvelous touch with actors, who revered him. He is underrated as a visual artist because he created a separate style appropriate to the needs of each movie. And as a dramatic director, keeping the audience involved in every scene, very few are in his league.

I am partial to so many of his films, but would give special shout-outs to Prince of the City, probably his most complex movie, and in my view a masterpiece; the stunningly tense Fail-Safe, under-appreciated because of its proximity to the identically plotted Dr. Strangelove; and Network, in which Lumet, brilliant screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, and an incomparable cast, foresaw the world we live in now.

POSTSCRIPT: Jeffery Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere is with me on Prince of the City:

To me Lumet's masterpiece is Prince of the City ('81) -- a nearly three-hour-long drama about the morality of finking out your friends in order to find your morality, and entirely about New York cops and mob guys and district attorneys and junkies, most of it set in the offices of this or that prosecutor with guys dressed in suits and shirtsleeves with cold takeout food and tepid coffee on the desk.

POSTSCRIPT: I found an interesting tidbit in a tribute piece by Clint O'Connor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

http://www.cleveland.com/moviebuff/index.ssf/2011/04/sidney_lumet_an_appreciation_g.html

When I asked about some of his all-time favorites, he wouldn't bite. "I'm not going to tell you that," said Lumet. "If I tell you about the ones I feel good about, it makes orphans of the other ones."

Robert Altman made a very similar comment in an interview once: The films are all my children; whatever one you say you don't like, I'm going to stick up for that one and say it's a favorite.

No orphans.