Sidney Lumet made great movies about New York — I never tire of “Dog Day Afternoon,” though I have always found “Network” to be a bit shrill and obvious in its satire — and was apparently a swell

guy to boot. Says Roger Ebert,

“He was a thoughtful director, who gathered the best collaborators he could find and channeled their resources into a focused vision. He shared his thoughts about that in his 1996 book ‘Making Movies.’ If you care to read only one book about the steps in the making of a film, make it that one. There is not a boast in it, not a word of idle puffery. It is all about the work.”

But as I argue in an op-ed today, Lumet at his peak failed to notice the most heartbreaking injustice in the city of New York, which was the crime wave that began in the early 60s and didn’t peak until the Dinkins administration. Lumet was like one of those kindly but clueless old judges who, confronted with a confirmed miscreant, says, “You’re a nice kid. Get out of my courtroom and don’t do it again.” Or as Woody Allen once has a clueless liberal say, in “Annie Hall,” “She has no money! She’s got a right to steal from us! After all, who is she gonna steal from if not us?”