Over & Overs: "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974)

by Cláudio Alves

To celebrate the Sidney Lumet centennial, I reflected on the director's filmography and tried to surmise which of his films had the biggest impact on me. In retrospect, I wish that exercise led to one of his many masterpieces. Yet, to choose something like Dog Day Afternoon or Network would be dishonest. As much as I adore those pictures, they're not works I tend to revisit that often. Certainly not to the point where music cues, editing choices, singular line deliveries, and shot compositions are so ingrained in my mind that re-watching them is a jolt of muscle memory. You could call my relationship with the film what some folk feel for their favorite comfort foods.

When the mood is blue and the soul needs a pick-me-up, Lumet's 1974 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express is a reliable treat, just frivolous and hearty enough to appease the spirit with whodunnit shenanigans. Or it could be a warm blanket of a movie, the soothing embrace of an old friend. Is it great cinema? Not really, but I wouldn't trade it for the world…

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Queering the Oscars: Chris Sarandon in "Dog Day Afternoon"

For Pride Month Team Experience is looking at queer & queer-adjacent moments in Oscar history.

by Nick Taylor

“I wish I had an abusive boyfriend who was willing to rob a bank to pay for my sex change operation.” sighed my friend Jude after we finished watching Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Pride is always an ideal excuse to make all my cool queer friends watch cool queer films (I do this all the time, mind you), and our Queering the Oscars series has created the perfect opportunity to revisit old favorites with good friends.

In the context of queer cinema, Dog Day Afternoon is a fantastic surprise to put in front of a crowd, since it doesn’t announce itself as such from the outset...

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Almost There: John Cazale in "Dog Day Afternoon"

by Cláudio Alves

On March 13th, 1978, John Cazale died of lung cancer at the age of 42. Before his untimely end, the Massachusetts-born actor had amassed an impressive list of credits, both on stage and onscreen. His filmography, as far as features are concerned, is of particular interest and amazement. He appeared in five films, six if you count The Godfather Part III, all of which were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (a record!). Not only that, but his quintet from the 70s (The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter) represents a list of era-defining classics.

Of them, 1975's Dog Day Afternoon was surely the closest the actor ever came to a much-deserved Oscar nomination…

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Murder on the Orient Express: Ingrid Bergman steals the show - or does she?

We're near the end of Ingrid Bergman's career so here's the penultimate episode in our retrospective. Happy 100th to the superstar on August 29th. Here's Lynn Lee...

By 1974, Ingrid Bergman was a grande dame of film in the twilight of her career, with two Best Actress Oscar wins under her belt, and nothing left to prove.  Perhaps that’s why she deliberately opted for such a small part in the star-studded Murder on the Orient Express, despite director Sidney Lumet’s attempts to coax her into taking a bigger one.  And yet, despite her own efforts to stay out of the spotlight, it found her anyway, with her tiny role as a mousy, middle-aged Swedish missionary netting her an unlikely third Oscar.

We don’t see too many movies like Orient Express these days – A-list extravaganzas where most of the stars end up with little more than glorified cameos but just seem to be in it for fun.  And to be fair, the movie is fun and directed with flair, even as it plays up the absurd theatricality of the whodunit setup – something that doesn’t register as strongly when you’re reading Agatha Christie’s plummy prose.  It’s a bit much at times...

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1964: Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker

Tim here. Ordinarily, I take this space to talk about animation, but with it being 1964 Month at the Film Experience, I wanted to go someplace else – not least because the state of animation in 1964 was not terribly exciting, unless you’re one of those people for whom a semicentennial tribute to Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear sounds like the absolute best conversation we could be having.

Instead, I’d like to use this bully pulpit to call attention to one of my perpetual favorite picks for Hugely Underrated American Film Masterpiece You All Need to Have Seen, Like, Yesterday: The Pawnbroker, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Rod Steiger, who received an Oscar nomination. It premiered 50 years ago this very month, in competition at the 14th Berlin International Film Festival (they festival’ed differently in those days), not premiering until the following year in the States due to its nudity and generally sour tone. A half of a century has, beyond question, blunted the impact of the movie’s most boundary-pushing elements (not least being the fact that naked women have become so blandly normalized in mainstream film, a development this very movie did a tremendous amount to encourage), and even its then-unprecedented engagement with the Holocaust, including the first scene in an American film set in a concentration camp, feels a little quaint today.

But the grime of humanity isn’t so easily wiped away, and Steiger’s devastatingly committed performance – it’s the best thing he ever did, I’d say, though I’m admittedly dubious about Steiger as often as not – is still a raging powerhouse of human torment. Lord knows The Pawnbroker isn’t any fun, but it’s moving and visceral like few films then or now would dare to be.

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