Comparing Dog Day Afternoon And Clockwork Orange

I want to explore the concept of "left cycle" films using the article entitled "The Left and Right Cycles" by Robert Ray. To help me explore what makes up a "left cycle" film, I will compare two movies, both "left cycle" according to Ray. Those movies are "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Clockwork Orange". What makes both of these movies "left cycle", and how to they differ within that classification?

First, I think it is important to differentiate between the "left" and "right" movies. What Ray says to this is "the three factors that superficially divided them: the response to the frontier's closing, the characteristics of the hero, and willingness to acknowledge self-consciousness."

As for the first mentioned of the three factors dividing the "left" …show more content…
In Dog Day Afternoon, Sonny, a Vietnam vet, is living in New York City while a major economic depression is occurring. He decides to rob a bank, and as we learn especially through the scene where he is speaking to the media, he made this rash decision because of living in these circumstances that did not allow him to provide for the people he loved the way wanted …show more content…
Even though Sonny has an accomplice with him, you still have the sense that he is all on his own. He alone must figure out how to rise against the system and rules that everybody else is forced to live by. Just the fact that Sonny is an outlaw however isn't so much what makes this film "left", it's the fact that you find yourself rooting for him very early on. There are many things he does and says that show you he isn't really a bad guy. Like he lets himself be concerned about the comfort of his hostages, so we know he doesn't really plan on killing any of them. And it is fairly obvious that although Sonny has knowledge about how banks work, he has never robbed one before and makes many mistakes because of that. He is the underdog, a point that is really set in when you see the hundreds of policemen surrounding the