The 10 Best Performances in Sydney Lumet’s Movies, Ranked

Few directors understood actors and the craft of acting as Sidney Lumet did, a former child actor who became one of cinema’s great realist directors. Lumet gave his films a documentary like realism, which at the time no one else was doing, though many were influenced and followed suit. By the late seventies, it seemed as though a part in a Lumet film came with an Oscar nomination attached. In the years spanning 1965 through 1977, actors received twelve Academy Award nominations and won three. Lumet himself was nominated four times for Best Director, excelling with stories about man railing against the bigger, often corrupt system. When he stayed on the path of realistic films and subject matter, he was among the most gifted directors working.

Like many of the greats of the seventies he crashed and burned once, with major box office and critical failure of ‘The Wiz; (1978), but rarely again. He moved easily between original screenplays and adaptations of plays or literature, always focusing on the human story. Half of his films were adaptations of plays, some of the greatest works of the stage, as well as modern classics such as ‘Equus’ (1977) which despite superb performances did not make the screen transfer quite so well.

His best period came in the seventies where he was considered to be one of the greatest filmmakers at work, though was never considered in the same class as Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, Allen, or Kubrick. Lumet was among the second tier of directors who from time to time moved into the front ranks with his work, ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ (1975) and ‘Network’ (1976) among them.

He was one of the great realists of his time, intensely influenced by the New Italian cinema which emerged after the war. His work in television taught him to shoot economically and fast, but to always pay attention to his actors as they are the connection for the audience.