Dog Day Afternoon - Enzian Theater

Nominated for 6-Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director and winner of Best Original Screenplay (1976)!

50^th Anniversary! 35mm Screening!

Based upon a real-life story that happened in the early seventies in which the Chase Manhattan Bank in Flatbush, Brooklyn, was held siege by a bank robber determined to steal enough money for his transgender lover to undergo a sex change operation. On a hot summer afternoon, the First Savings Bank of Brooklyn is held up by Sonny Wortzik (Academy Award-winner Al Pacino) and his lover (John Cazale) Sal two down-and-out characters. Although the bank manager and female tellers agree not to interfere with the robbery, Sonny finds that there’s actually nothing much to steal, as most of the cash has been picked up for the day. Sonny then gets an unexpected phone call from Police Captain Eugene Moretti (2-time Academy Award nominee, Charles Durning), who tells him the place is surrounded by the city’s entire police force.

1975, 125 minutes, USA, Directed by Sidney Lumet, Rated R

“One of Sidney Lumet's best jobs of directing and one of Al Pacino's best performances (as a bisexual bank robber) come together in a populist thriller with lots of New York juice.”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER
“It's beautifully acted by performers who appear to have grown up on the city's sidewalks in the heat and hopelessness of an endless midsummer.”
– Vincent Canby, NEW YORK TIMES
“Dog Day Afternoon is, in the whole as well as the parts, filmmaking at its best.”
– VARIETY
“By turns manically funny, slyly terrifying and strangely provocative, it somehow reaches beyond its format to make startling comment on the rampant panic of contemporary life.”
– Kevin Kelly, BOSTON GLOBE