On Sidney Lumet

Pops and I talk about film a lot, and whenever director Sidney Lumet (Serpico, The Wiz) comes up, we both reflect back on the 2005 Academy Awards show. The Academy awarded Lumet with an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement, but whenever cameras flashed into the audience, Lumet was surrounded by a bevy of sexy sisters. What Dad knew that I didn’t was that Lumet was married to Lena Horne during the 60s, and so these young ladies were undoubtedly their daughters. What neither of us knew was that, actually, Lumet wasn’t married to Lena Horne, but to Horne’s daughter Gail Jones from 1963 to 1978. Which doesn’t make the sisters (Amy, Jenny, and maybe Lumet’s granddaughters) any less sexy, but for accuracy’s sake, I’m just sayin.

I bring up Lumet because the Cinémathèque Française just finished a retrospective showing most of his 50 films, and because my 26-year-old baby brother Christopher M. Lewis worked as an office production assistant on Lumet’s latest, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. The movie – called 7h58 Ce Samedi-Là (or 7:58 This Saturday) in France – opened weeks ago here, and it wasn’t bad, a little redemption tale of familial corruption. I prefer the slightly showoffy styles of directors like Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson, and more obvious recognized masters like Spielberg, Kubrick, Scorsese. But I’ve seen more Lumet than I thought: a law school professor made us all rent The Pawnbroker once upon a time; The Wiz of course; Serpico; The Verdict; Dog Day Afternoon (above), the only film I managed to catch at the Cinémathèque; plus P. T. Anderson once spoke highly of Network (a Magnolia inspiration), which made it worth a Tower Video rental to me – excellent.

And so, congratulations Chris, the main point of this post. Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream (Le Rêve de Cassandre) opens tomorrow, three months ahead of the US. Woody’s the bomb, 50% of the time anyway.