Serpico
Serpico is a 1973 American biographical crime drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Al Pacino in the title role. The screenplay was adapted by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler from the book of the same name written by Peter Maas with the assistance of its subject, Frank Serpico. The story details Serpico's struggle with corruption within the New York City Police Department during his eleven years of service, and his work as a whistleblower that led to the investigation by the Knapp Commission.
For other uses, see Serpico (disambiguation).Serpico
Serpico
by Peter Maas
- Artists Entertainments Complex, Inc.
- Produzion De Laurentiis International Manufacturing Company S.P.A.
Paramount Pictures (United States and United Kingdom)
Columbia Pictures (International)
- December 5, 1973
130 minutes[1]
United States
English
$3.3 million[2]
Producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the rights from Maas. Agent Martin Bregman joined the film as co-producer. Bregman suggested Pacino for the main part, and John G. Avildsen was hired to direct the film. Pacino met with Serpico to prepare for the role early in the summer of 1973. After Avildsen was dismissed, Lumet was hired as his replacement. On a short notice, he selected the shooting locations and organized the scenes; the production was filmed in July and August.
Upon its release, Serpico became a critical and commercial success. At the same time, the film drew criticism from police officers. It received nominations at the Academy Awards and BAFTA Awards. Pacino earned the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, while Salt and Wexler received the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Plot[edit]
NYPD Officer Frank Serpico is rushed to the hospital, having been shot in the face. Chief Sidney Green fears that Serpico was shot by another cop. The rest of the film is shown as a long flashback.
Serpico graduates from the police academy with big ideas for improving the police force's community relations. He dresses like an actual civilian instead of wearing the department's standard plainclothes dress, which is easily recognizable. While he is chasing a burglar, other officers fail to recognize him as one of their own, and shoot at him. He realizes that deviating from protocols can be dangerous.
Serpico reports an attempted bribe to a high-ranking investigator, who chuckles and advises him to keep the money. Serpico soon learns that corruption is rampant in the police department. Forced to accompany officers as they collect payoffs from criminals and small businesses, Serpico refuses to accept his share of the money. He makes several attempts to alert superiors to the corruption but is rebuffed every time. Other officers learn that he is reporting them, and he begins to fear for his life.
Serpico and his well-connected friend Blair go to the mayor's assistant, who promises a real investigation and support but is stymied by political pressure. Ostracized, frustrated, and fearful, Serpico sinks into depression, which ruins his relationship with his girlfriend. He begins brutalizing well-connected suspects who had been bribing other officers and thought themselves protected. Finally, Serpico informs Captain McClain that he has reported his experiences to oversight agencies outside the police force. Furious, McClain tells the other officers.
Blair uses his connections to arrange a personal interview with the district attorney, who tells Serpico that if he testifies to a grand jury, a major investigation will follow. The DA limits his questions and prevents Serpico from revealing the ubiquity of corruption in the police force. Serpico and Blair take their story to The New York Times. After his allegations are printed, his superiors retaliate by assigning him to a dangerous narcotics squad in Brooklyn.
During a raid on a drug trafficker's apartment, Serpico's partners hold back at a critical moment and Serpico gets shot in the face. After a long, painful recovery, he testifies before the Knapp Commission, a government inquiry into NYPD corruption. An epilogue states that Frank Serpico resigned from the NYPD on June 15, 1972, was awarded the NYPD Medal of Honor for "conspicuous bravery in action", and moved to Switzerland.
Release[edit]
The film was released on December 5, 1973 in New York,[40] and on December 18 in Los Angeles.[11] The opening week in New York garnered $123,000.[41] Serpico was released nationwide on February 6, 1974.[42] The film was a critical and commercial success.[11] It grossed $29.8 million in the United States and Canada generating $14.6 million in theatrical rentals.[3] It earned theatrical rentals worldwide of $23.4 million.[4]
Serpico attended the premiere of the film,[28] but he did not finish watching it.[43] Serpico felt "distant" from the end results.[44] On an interview with Pauline Kael for The New Yorker, he concluded that it "didn't give a sense of frustration you feel when you're not able to do anything".[45] According to Lumet's account, he met Serpico shortly before the production. The director asked him to stay clear of the set, to not make Pacino "self-conscious" regarding his portrayal.[28] Serpico watched the film in its entirety for the first time in 2010.[43] In a later interview, he declared that Lumet barred him from the set after he interrupted the shooting of a scene that in real life "never happened". Serpico also criticized the dismissal of Avildsen by the production team. Serpico and Avildsen remained friends, and shared a property on Long Island for three years in the 1980s.[46] New York City Police Commissioner Michael Codd stated that the film "tends to imply that Serpico was the only honest cop in the whole department".[47] Detective Durk was not pleased with Serpico. Durk, who was depicted in the character of Bob Blair, felt that the movie would deter other policemen to denounce corruption. On an interview with The New York Times, he considered that the movie was unfair to honest police officers. Durk stated that the end of the film conveyed that "the cost of honesty is martyrdom", and Serpico's departure for Switzerland showed him "wounded and frustrated". Meanwhile, Bronx district attorney Burton B. Roberts declared that it "bears absolutely no relationship to the truth". Lumet defended his artistic license on the portrayal of the story, as he felt he desired to make a film that "people believed in".[44] Bregman dismissed the critics, as he felt that the real names were not relevant for viewers in cities outside New York.[45] Maas dismissed Durk's claims regarding honest policemen and asked "where were they?"[48]
Critical reception[edit]
Premiere reception[edit]
The New York Times felt that the film was "galvanizing" for Pacino's performance, and by the "tremendous intensity" of Lumet's direction. The publication considered the film at the same time "disquieting" for its use of fictional names, as the reviewer felt that it diminished the role of Durk. Meanwhile, it called Theodorakis's soundtrack "redundant and dumb".[49] The New York Daily News delivered a favorable review of the film. It rated it four stars out of five, and called it "a triumph of intelligence, compassion and style".[50] A follow-up critic by the publication deemed Pacino's acting a "masterful performance", as the reviewer remarked "he walks like a cop. He talks like a cop. He even seems to think as a cop". The review also praised Lumet and his "talent for achieving social realism".[51] The Record considered it "one of the finest films of the year". While it felt that the portrayal of Serpico was "too righteous and obsessive", the review favored Pacino, but felt that his performance was "sometimes a little too intense". It praised the photography of New York City as authentic, and credited Ornitz and Allen's work for it.[52] The Village Voice wrote a mixed review. It criticized the focus of the film on Serpico, and the minor role the screenplay writers gave to the character that represented Durk. The reviewer considered that Serpico was "worth seeing" for Pacino's performance.[53] Variety deemed Pacino's acting "outstanding", and Lumet's a combination of "gritty action and thought-provoking comment".[54] For Newhouse News Services it was an "exciting movie", but the review remarked that it was "weakened" by its focus on Serpico. The news agency attributed the minimization of the other characters to avoid "possible lawsuits".[55] The Los Angeles Times acclaimed Serpico. Charles Champlin called Pacino "one of the handful of genuine star actors in American films". Salt and Wexler's screenplay was hailed as "almost documentary reality",[56] and its treatment of the main character "a complex and evolving portrait". The reviewer also remarked that the romances and break-ups were presented with "unhackneyed honesty".[57] The contributions of the supporting cast were well noted.[58] Champlin felt that Allen's work was considered to be "high on the list" for an Academy Award nomination and deemed Theodorakis' music "effective".[59]
Wide release reception[edit]
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars, noting its treatment of corruption as its "principal strength and weakness" and adding that Serpico "loses the perspective" that "corruption ... begins and ends with individuals making active and passive decisions".[60] The Philadelphia Inquirer celebrated the film's critic of police corruption, despite its "embellishments and omissions" on the story. Pacino's performance was called "riveting", and the piece praised the "sharply individualized characterizations" by Tony Roberts, Jack Kehoe, John Randolph, Biff McGuire, Barbara Eda-Young and Cornelia Sharpe.[61] Meanwhile, also for Philadelphia Inquirer, investigative journalist Greg Walter lamented its portrayal of police officers as "snarling, insipid ass(es)". Walter felt that Maas' book was "coldly objective", but that the director's work delivered characters that were "one-dimensional caricatures".[47] The Boston Globe welcomed Lumet's "melodramatic efficiency". The publication considered the story "heavily repetitious", but favored its "quick pace". It regarded Ornitz's camerawork as "the right documentary look", while it lamented Theodorakis' score as "disruptive" and "out of character".[62] Esquire further criticized Theodorakis, as the reviewer opined that his "composing voice ought to be silenced". Meanwhile, the piece praised Allen's work.[63]
Legacy[edit]
On September 21, 1975, Serpico was premiered on television on The ABC Sunday Night Movie.[81] It was released on VHS in 1991,[82] and on DVD in 2002.[83] The film was then made available in Blu-ray in 2013.[84] Masters of Cinema released Serpico in the United Kingdom on Blu-ray in 2014. It contained three video documentaries about the film, a photo gallery with an audio commentary by Lumet and a forty-four page booklet.[85]
A television series based on Maas's book and the motion picture was broadcast on NBC between September 1976 and January 1977, with David Birney as Serpico.[86] Fourteen episodes were broadcast, and one was never aired. The series was preceded by a pilot film, Serpico: The Deadly Game, which was broadcast in April 1976.[87]
The main character in the 1976 Italian film The Cop in Blue Jeans was inspired by Serpico.[88] In the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, a poster of Serpico is featured in the room of its main character, Tony Manero.[89] The film is referenced in 1994's Natural Born Killers by the character Dwight McClusky.[90] The poster of the film is featured in the room of the main character of 1997's Boogie Nights.[91] Serpico was mentioned in the 1995 film Get Shorty.[92] In a 2004 Corner Gas episode, "The Taxman", local cops Davis and Karen talk about the film and Karen tries to rent it at the video store.[93] In a 2007 episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "Bums: Making a Mess All Over the City", Charlie imitates Pacino’s performance after the gang buys an out of commission police car. The film was referenced in a 2016 episode of El ministerio del tiempo as the reason for the nickname of one of its main characters, "Pacino".[94] Among other police films, Serpico influenced the Hong Kong action cinema.[95]
