Sidney Lumet, R.I.P.

Earlier this week, Sidney Lumet, died. He was one of the most successful film directors of his generation He was the man who made Network, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and 12 Angry Men, He died on April 9. He was eighty six years old.

Sidney Lumet is being remembered as a New York director, and as a film maker who understood the people and the streets of New York. His most remembered films dealt with New York City people or with people who worked in the city of New York. Serpico is about New York City cops and that world of honor and corruption. Dog Day Afternoon is about trying to survive in New York City when one is different and has issues. 12 Angry Men is about men from all works of life coming together to decide a young man's fate and to overcome bias and to understand the differences and the changes. My favorite of his work, Network is about alienation, and attempting to connect, and the failure, the cost of success and the reality that life is not a fairy tale.

It is said that Sidney Lumet never went Hollywood, never sold out, remained a director of New York movie realism.

Sidney Lumet, filmmaker, R.I.P