The Books of My Life: Sidney Lumet

Jay Boyer's Sidney Lumet (New York: Twayne, Twayne Filmmakers Series, 1993) explores twelve of the thirty-eight Lumet's films made between 1957 and 1992: Twelve Angry Men, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Pawnbroaker, Murder on the Orient Express, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Prince of the City, Daniel, Running on Empty, Q and A, and A Stranger Amongst Us. Lumet would go on to make eight more films, one for television, between 1993 and 2007.

Lumet, as Boyer notes, has often been seen by critics as someone who serves the material he is given rather than as someone who authors the films he makes. Boyer's book takes issue with that perspective, however. Boyer argues that the twelve films he centred his analysis on have a thematic core. Lumet's protagonists become, Boyer argues, increasingly isolated from the group over the course of Lumet's films and realise the complexity and corruption of the world around them in the process. Lumet's motifs and mise-en-scène serve, Boyer argues, this theme. Water expresses a rite of passage, a passage  from innocence to a realisation that the world around them is complex and corrupt for Lumet's protagonists. Lumet's use of linear planes with their walls, ceilings, and other impediments in the spectators field of vision entangle the protagonist in a web of conflicting circumstances that force his protagonists to make a choice. The focal length of lenses Lumet uses expands and compresses cinematic space. Lumet's realist and more sytlised style orders and disorders Lumet's cinematic frame.

Boyer's book is a superb analysis of the work of Sidney Lumet. It successfully and oftentimes brilliantly integrates theme, mise-en-scène, and editing. I highly recommend Boyer's book to anyone interested in film theory, film method, auteurism, integrated film analysis, and Sidney Lumet. It was, for me, an example of how a book on a director should be written.