“Attica! Attica! Attica!”  : Even Al Pacino fans didn’t understand this line from Sidney Lumet’s A Dog’s Day

“Attica! Attica! Attica!” : Even Al Pacino fans didn’t understand this line from Sidney Lumet’s A Dog’s Day

In Sidney Lumet’s masterpiece, led by the extraordinary Al Pacino, who gives one of the best performances of his career, undoubtedly one of the most intense, Sonny (Al Pacino) and Sally (John Casale) rob a bank, but quickly find themselves surrounded by the police. . Then the bank employees were taken hostage.

Sonny’s motivation is quite altruistic: the money is to be used for her boyfriend Leon’s (Chris Sarandon) surgery to turn him into a woman. From a conventional plot, the heist turns into a media circus as onlookers gather in front of the bank and members of the gay movement support Sonny.

For police as robbers, the game promises tension. Feeling supported by public opinion, and while the police and FBI do their best to take the hostages, Sonny at one point insults the crowd by crying. “Attica! Attica! Attica! Attica!”

Below is the sequence in question. Famous “Attica! Attica!” Located from 01”50…

This line, coined by the actor, is a clear reference to the tragic events that took place barely three years earlier, and which still linger in the collective memory of Americans. The uprising began in early September 1971 in Attica Prison, located in the state of New York. It was the most violent rebellion America had ever known.

On September 13, 1971, nicknamed Bloody Monday, Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the police and National Guard to launch an attack that turned into a massacre that killed nearly 50 people, including 32 inmates and 11 prison guards.

Shortly after these events, in a telephone conversation with President Nixon, in order to explain the number of dead, Rockefeller justified himself in this way, with a response both scandalous and unfair: “This is life!”…

Source: Allocine

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