Breaking The Scene (Dog Day Afternoon — Releasing the Hostage)

Here’s a scene from a film that is a masterclass in establishing irony and subverting expectations of the genre. Also, it has Al Pacino doing the thing where he yells a lot.

Written By: Frank Pierson

Scene Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQmU6Yhnr9E

Scene Context:

Sonny, in a poor attempt to rob a bank, has taken hostages. Police have contacted him and he’s agreed to let one hostage go as a show of trust. They don’t know what Sonny looks like.

Scene Conflicts:

• Sonny wants to make a deal with the cops that guarantees his survival. He also wants to make sure the hostages are safe.
• Eugene wants to arrest Sonny, but wants the hostages to be safe.
• The cops have no clue what’s going on, but are ready to fire.

Scene Outline:

1. Sonny walks out with Howard and Carol at gunpoint. He lets Howard go.
2. Cops swarm in on Howard, believing him to be the robber. Lead Detective Eugene rushes forward and yells to quell the situation.
3. Carol yells at the cops, trying to explain that Howard is a hostage, not a robber.
4. More and more guns get trained on Howard as he is pressed against a cop car. Eugene frantically rushes to stop the cops from firing.
5. Eugene successfully stops anyone from hurting Howard. Sees Sonny at the bank entrance and asks to speak.
6. Eugene lambastes Sonny, blames him for the miscommunication.
7. Eugene asks Sonny to come out. Shows Sonny that he isn’t carrying a weapon.
8. Sonny says that if he comes out and is attacked, his partner in the bank will kill everyone. Eugene says he understands. Sonny agrees.

Why It Works:

Three-Pronged Conflict: One of the strongest pieces of this scene lies in it’s base structure, in which there are three entities of conflict. You have Sonny wanting safety for himself and his hostages. You have Eugene wanting safety for the hostages as well, but wants to subdue Sonny. And then you have the mob of cops who want neither safety for the hostages nor Sonny. This means, no matter what, everyone is somehow in conflict with one another. By having such wonderfully mapped out conflicts, the scene allows itself to shift continually in a form that is natural and exciting.

High Stakes, Frantic Tempo: It’s one thing to have life/death stakes as an aspect of your scene, but to tie it into a chaotic fervor makes it even more stress-inducing. Here, everything erupts into pure chaos when the cops pull their guns and move to subdue the innocent Howard. Both Sonny and Eugene are trying to corral them and save Howard, but neither can seem to speak over the frenetic energy. Everything moves ridiculously quick and thus, we’re given this fast moving anxiety about the scene.

Ironic Character: What made me especially love this scene (and film as a whole) is how it departs from traditional bank robber tropes. Sonny isn’t, by any means, a hardened criminal. He barely planned this bank robbery out, and similarly isn’t a cruel person. In fact, he‘s genuinely afraid of anyone getting hurt. On top of this, he’s wonderfully empathetic and, through a number of scenes, is shown going out of his way to comfort his own hostages. This twist on the genre allows for Sonny to be an extremely likable character and makes this the perfect movie for him. How is a notably peaceable man meant to successfully rob a bank and take hostages? The question forms an innate and immediate conflict that bleeds into every scene, this one included.

Surprising Ally: It’s a brief moment, but the fact that Carol yells at the cops is both hilarious and intriguing. She’s a hostage of Sonny’s, so one might think that she’d be trying to help the cops or maybe even hint at ways they could help save her. Rather, she accosts them for being overly violent and trigger happy. Not only is this a beautifully unique moment, but it speaks to one of the film’s core ideas- law doesn’t decide your character. Despite Sonny being a bank robber and hostage taker, he’s not someone doing this out of some deranged power fantasy. The cops, on the other hand, want control for the pure sake of having control.

Summary:

If there’s one thing I can recall from this film, it’s the stunning premise which bleeds into every scene. Sure, there are some other plot mechanics at work, but the key to this scene is it’s continued sense of irony, all of which is owed to the central concept.