Dog Day Afternoon Under a Microscope
Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975) is a crime drama film starring Al Pacino and John Cazale. This film discusses many things, from the phenomenon of bank robbery, popularity, the psychological effects of people being held hostage to the harshness of marginalized groups treated poorly by society — however, the film’s redlining theme is miscommunication itself. Or specifically, the conflicts that arise from miscommunications. All brought up and then unraveled through a single almost real-time event. A terrible bank robbery.
Bank robberies in popular cinema are often depicted as incredibly stylized and intricate. However, in this film, a bank robbery is portrayed as something messy and horribly chaotic. Sonny Wortzik, the main character who robs a city bank with his friend Sal Naturile, is a fundamentally careless and clumsy person; he cannot coordinate or properly communicate his plans to rob the bank itself. Thus, what eventually happened was a horribly messy bank robbery that was full of avoidable mix-ups.
The miscommunication phenomenon first occurred when Moretti, a hostage negotiator, convinced Sonny to free one of the hostages. Moretti asked him to release a female hostage, but Sonny clumsily freed the bank’s male security guard. When the security guard was freed, dozens of police officers positioned outside the bank thought the security guard was one of the bank robbers. So they immediately attacked the security guard and pointed a gun at him. But this first emergence of miscommunication in the film was appeased when Sonny managed to say that the person he released was a hostage, not a robber. This moment is the first instance of the film where miscommunication caused unnecessary problems.
The film also explored popularity, mainly the popularity of an individual daring to voice anger firmly held by the public. The film’s narrative brilliantly shows how people who dare to speak up can end up being idolized or even exalted by the mass.
Sonny’s character has great anger towards the police. In the film. this anger lay deep inside him because of the mass murder of a group rebelling prisoners in a prison called Aticca not long before the robbery. This matter is subtly shown throughout the narrative, with the most spotlight in the scene where Sonny leaves the bank and yelled “Attica! Attica! Attica!” to the police and people who were watching the robbery. Sonny shouted to remind them of the injustice. The surrounding crowd of people started roaring to show support. A community fueled with mass anger and disappointment towards an institution built to protect them is cheering and rooting for a criminal who is literally stealing money from their banks.
This odd kind of support and admiration can also be seen when the police gave pizza to the hostages. When the courier approached the door and gave the pizzas to Sonny, the courier felt genuinely starstruck upon meeting him; he then expressed his excitement when he shouted into the surrounding crowd, “I’M A STAR!!”. This pizza man’s exhilarating shout was then followed by big cheers from the crowd. This film found an incredible way to discuss an unusual kind of popularity, namely the popularity of a person committing a condemnable crime.
Apart from popularity and miscommunication, this film also brilliantly displays the compelling psychological effects of a hostage situation. Two psychological syndromes were explored in the narrative, namely Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome.
Stockholm Syndrome is a well-known psychic condition that causes the hostages to sympathize and even befriend the people who held them hostage. This condition can be seen throughout the robbery. Where the hostages actually became sympathetic for Sonny and Sal. This was even clearer when they helped Sonny negotiate and even more at the airport where one of the hostages gave a rosary to Sal.
Lima syndrome is the exact opposite of Stockholm syndrome; it is a psychic condition in which the criminal becomes highly sympathetic towards the captive. In this film, Lima syndrome is shown more prominent than Stockholm syndrome. This condition can be most seen when Sonny begins to genuinely want to start a conversation with the hostages. He asked about their families and all different aspects of their lives. Sonny began to believe that the hostages he held had complete confidence in him and would not harm him. In fact, in one scene, Sonny gave one of his guns to a hostage and taught him how to use it.
Another compelling phenomenon deeply explored in the film was the unfair marginalization of transgender people. This topic emerged in the second act of the film, where the robbery’s motive was finally discovered to be Sonny’s way to pay for his partner, Leon, sex reassignment surgery.
The marginalization of people like Leon was indirectly caused him to do the robbery. He felt marginalized if he is dating a man. He felt like he needs to be dating a woman to feel accepted by society. More of this unraveled when Leon was interviewed by the police; she revealed that Sonny was an extremely abusive boyfriend. She confessed that she even became suicidal because of his abuse that led to her being hospitalized. And even though the bank robbery was carried out for Leon’s surgery costs, she did not know that Sonny would rob a bank. This symbolizes the binary nature gender is perceived by society. Sonny hates the fact that the person he loves is considered a male by society. This societal stigma indirectly pushed him to do heinous acts towards society itself, like robbery and abuse.
Leon, as a human being, was ostracized from society just because of her lifestyle. She was often cursed at and harassed by the people around her. This film addressed the transgender issue without judging, discriminating, and playing stereotypes. In fact, Leon’s character was really well developed. She was not characterized as an over-the-top flamboyant and exaggerated character like many other films depicting transgender characters.
Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon doesn’t take the liberty to begin the film by explicitly explaining the robbery’s objective or its protagonist’s behavior and the morality behind it. But through the course of the film, with all the mess unraveling, the audience can observe, judge, and understand the inherent virtue of each mess. In this brilliant film, sociological phenomena such as popularity, mental illness, and trans issues were brilliantly explored and discussed with nuance and depth through the microscopic view of a bank’s messy and chaotic robbery.
