Dog Day Afternoon

"Dog Day Afternoon" has been released on Blu-ray before, and yet this "40th Anniversary Edition," released just this week, never once seems superfluous. They've found a fresh angle on the material. And while it's not a revolutionary claim, it's one that's certainly due a wider amount of public acceptance: this whole package seems designed to suggest that the late acting great John Cazale (seen in only five films-here, in both "Godfather" pictures, "The Conversation," and "The Deer Hunter") was one of the primary creative forces of his generation. But then, you don't need any extra features to prove that-all you need is "Dog Day Afternoon."

Even if you've only seen the parodies, you know the beats by now: Al Pacino and Cazale play Sonny Wortzik and Sal Naturale, partners in petty crime, who elect to rob a local bank in order to help pay for a much-needed sex-change operation for Sonny's lover. (Sal's motives, quite chillingly, are left far more ambiguous.) You also already know that Pacino's livewire acting-the "Attica" speech, the beads of sweat as big as a swimming pool, the unending swear-word-laden stammer-elevates the heist and the movie into the realms of absurdist art. But it's Cazale, too often marginalized, who covers the swing shift between the goofy and the grandly tragic. His stoic-but-shaken line readings betray that Sal has no interest in turning back toward a world that keeps putting him in the corner. He's as integral to the film as the iconic Pacino, as they're shades of the same coin, they're ego and id-one feels the pain, and the other shouts it down.

The Blu-ray carries over a number of special features from prior releases of the film. In an audio commentary, director Sidney Lumet (author of one of the few great books about the subject of directing films-he can verbalize concepts that few can even execute) explains the production process for a number of selected scenes. Many other members of the cast and crew chime in via "The Making of Dog Day Afternoon," which details the production in four separate chapters. (One on the script, another on the casting, the third on the film's accuracy in relation to the "true story" it's based on, and the last surveys the film's legacy.) Finally, two pieces of promotional material are pulled from the archives: a featurette profiling the director ("Lumet: Film Maker") and a theatrical trailer.

The 2nd disc in the package picks up the efforts to canonize Mr. Cazale. The centerpiece is "I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale," a mid-length documentary produced for HBO Films a number of years ago. The picture, directed by Richard Shephard, speaks to a full house of the late actor's friends and collaborators, most notably to his partner Meryl Streep, who bravely and openly recounts the actor's final days-in an attempt to place his career in a context that spans far beyond just the five films by which he was immortalized. (In an additional extra, Shephard comments on his aims with the documentary and about his own relationship to Cazale.)

The rest of the footage on this new disc similarly foregrounds the work of this oft-forgotten American artist. Extended interviews with Pacino and with friend Israel Horowitz allow the two subjects to discuss their friendship with Cazale in a manner far more nuanced than that allowed by the documentary format. And two 60s-era short films,"The American Way" and "The Box," allow us to look at two of the actor's other works (Cazale appears in the first short and is credited with photographing the second). But it's the box art of this latest release tells the story clearest. Al Pacino gets his usual top billing, but there's a credit of the same size, "Also Featuring John Cazale," right beside him, on the same pedestal. As it should be.

"Dog Day Afternoon"
Blu-ray
Warnerbrothers.com
$24.98