Sidney Lumet, whose directorial debut was 12 Angry Men, has died in New York at the age of 86, the BBC reports.
His last film was the 2007 crime thriller Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, directed when Lumet was in his early 80s.
His prolific body of work spanned six decades and included an astonishing period in the late seventies when he made two films with Al Pacino which cemented the actor’s reputation as one of the foremost actors of his generation. Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico were accompanied by the all-star Agatha Christie adaptation Murder of the Orient Express, the Paddy Chayefsky scripted Network and his haunting take on the Peter Shaffer play Equus with Richard Burton.
His cinematic relationship with New York rivals that of Woody Allen, and the consistency of his film work over the fifty years in which he worked is not only impressive it is almost without compare.
The world of film has lost one of its foremost talents today, and there is no better way to celebrate his legacy than to look back and immerse yourself in the work he leaves to us.
