Sidney Lumet
American director, producer and screenwriter (1924–2011)
A director's score is the sum of their films' composite canon scores — methodology.
- Born
- June 25, 1924 · Philadelphia
- Died
- April 9, 2011 · Manhattan
- Nationality
- United States
- Work
- film director, screenwriter, film producer, writer
The craftsman who never left the room
Lumet is the great argument that a director need not have a "look" to have a vision. He built no signature landscape, forced no camera trick you could name, and never mistook decoration for depth. What he had instead was a subject — the individual pressed against an institution until one of them breaks — and a city, New York, to stage it in. Where Martin Scorsese turned the same streets into opera, Lumet kept them at reporter's distance: a jury room, a precinct, a courtroom, a bank under siege. He questioned authority, as the record puts it, from inside the working class that authority grinds. That is not a style. It is something rarer — a temperament, held for fifty years.
Philadelphia to the live studio
Born in Philadelphia on June 25, 1924 to the Yiddish theatre actor Baruch Lumet, he was a professional performer before he was ten — Broadway child roles, then the crucible that formed his whole method: live television. From 1950 he directed hundreds of episodes for CBS, learning to stage drama fast, in real time, with actors who had to land it once. He carried that discipline straight into features. His debut, 12 Angry Men (1957), is still the purest distillation of the man: twelve men, one room, no escape, the institution of the jury turned into a pressure cooker. Across a half-century he made more than forty films at better than one a year — Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976), The Verdict (1982), Running on Empty (1988), and a last, ferocious heist tragedy, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007). The Academy nominated him for Best Director four times — for 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, and The Verdict — and he never won a competitive statue, collecting an Honorary Award instead and, in 1996, writing Making Movies, still the most useful book a working director has left us.
Speed as an ethic
His legend was efficiency, not agony: Prince of the City (1981), with its 135 locations, shot in fifty-two days. He rehearsed for weeks so he could shoot in one or two takes, and the result reads as trust — of the script, of the actor, of the audience to keep up. He directed Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway to Oscars in Network alone. To my eye his true medium was the human face under interrogation, moral or literal, and his refusal to prettify it is the closest thing he has to a signature.
What the numbers say
Our library ranks Lumet #31 among all directors at 17.24 across twenty films — respectable, and quietly telling. The curve is unusually front-loaded: his first film is his best. 12 Angry Men sits at #18 overall (5.25, cited by 14 of our sources), then a steep fall to Network at #106 (3.39), Dog Day Afternoon at #372 (2.04), and The Verdict at #697 (1.40). Everything else lives in the long tail — Serpico, that touchstone of the corruption cycle, lands only at #4153. The aggregate is honest about a career that peaked at the starting line and stayed prolific rather than climbing.
Where to start
12 Angry Men, obviously, for the theorem stated cleanly. Then Dog Day Afternoon for the same intelligence loosed on a real street, Network for the prophecy, and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead to see the old man's grip undiminished at the very end.
Films in our library, ranked
Ranked by composite canon score across 20+ authoritative lists, awards and polls — our ordering, with every placement citing its evidence on the film's page.
- 1
1957 · United States · drama
Berlin Golden Bear winner 1957 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1959 #1 · Letterboxd Top 250 #3
5.2514 citations - 2
1976 · United States · comedy, drama, romance
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1977 #2 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1976 · AFI 100 (2007) #64
3.3913 citations - 3
1975 · United States · crime, action, drama
Oscar Best Picture nominee 1975 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1976 #5 · National Film Registry (inducted 2009)
2.049 citations - 4
1982 · United States · drama
Oscar Best Picture nominee 1982 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1983 #7 · Empire 500 (2008) #254
1.406 citations - 5
1964 · United States · drama
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1968 #3 · National Film Registry (inducted 2008) · NYT Best 1,000 Movies
1.004 citations - 6
2007 · United States · crime, film-noir, drama
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2008 #7 · Ebert's annual top 10 2007 #3 · Film Comment year-end poll 2007 #15
0.833 citations - 7
1981 · United States · drama, crime
Sarris's annual top 10 1981 #6 · NYT Best 1,000 Movies · Siskel's annual top 10 1981 #7
0.513 citations - 80.362 citations
- 9
1988 · United States · drama
Kurosawa's 100 favorite films · Ebert's annual top 10 1988 #10
0.322 citations - 100.291 citation
- 11
1965 · United Kingdom / United States · drama
NYT Best 1,000 Movies · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
0.282 citations - 12
1973 · United States / Italy · crime, biography, drama
NYT Best 1,000 Movies · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
0.282 citations - 13
1970 · United States · documentary
National Film Registry (inducted 1999)
0.231 citation - 140.171 citation
- 150.171 citation
- 160.161 citation
- 170.161 citation
- 180.161 citation
- 190.131 citation
- 200.111 citation
Complete filmography
All 49 directorial credits recorded on Wikidata, in chronological order; films in our library link to their canon-score page.
- 1955The Death Of Socrates
- 195712 Angry Men
- 1958Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates
- 1958Stage Struck
- 1959That Kind of Woman
- 1959The Fugitive Kind
- 1960The Iceman Cometh
- 1962A View from the Bridge
- 1962Long Day's Journey into Night
- 1964Fail-Safe
- 1964The Pawnbroker
- 1965The Hill
- 1966The Deadly Affair
- 1966The Group
- 1968Bye Bye Braverman
- 1968The Sea Gull
- 1969The Appointment
- 1970King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis
- 1970Last of the Mobile Hot Shots
- 1971The Anderson Tapes
- 1972Child's Play
- 1973Serpico
- 1973The Offence
- 1974Lovin' Molly
- 1974Murder on the Orient Express
- 1975Dog Day Afternoon
- 1976Network
- 1977Equus
- 1978The Wiz
- 1980Just Tell Me What You Want
- 1981Prince of the City
- 1982Deathtrap
- 1982The Verdict
- 1983Daniel
- 1984Garbo Talks
- 1986Power
- 1986The Morning After
- 1988Running on Empty
- 1989Family Business
- 1990Q & A
- 1992A Stranger Among Us
- 1993Guilty as Sin
- 1996Night Falls on Manhattan
- 1997Critical Care
- 1999Gloria
- 2004Rachel, quand du seigneur
- 2004Strip Search
- 2006Find Me Guilty
- 2007Before the Devil Knows You're Dead