Amoreena (Title Credits), from "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975), directed by Sidney Lumet

I saw Dog Day Afternoon multiple times at Vernon's Towne Theatre when it first came out -- it was rated PG in Canada (versus R in the States), so I could get in as a 12-year-old, and for one dollar! For many years it was my favourite flick. It has one of the great casts of the 1970s (Al Pacino, John Cazale, and the Oscar-nominated Chris Sarandon among them), and Pacino's "Attica!" rant is iconic (if a bit overwrought -- the advent of hammy Al). But I was always most blown away by the opening sequence, in which the leads don't appear until the very end. What is that song?! I recognized Elton John's inimitable voice and phrasing, but having just discovered Elton, I didn't know his back catalogue well. Turned out it's a deep cut from the Tumbleweed Connection album, and rarely has music been so well melded with film. (Note the seamless way it turns into a tinny car-radio broadcast as Pacino and Cazale are introduced.) The montage of mid-seventies, mid-summer New York is spectacular, almost of anthropological interest at this point. Smoggy, scruffy, and overripe, the city groans under the burden of its own garbage; but it's also funky and stately and jaunty, like the song. Play it loud.

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