Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese led the tributes as the film world mourned the loss of director Sidney Lumet, a master film-maker identified strongly with his beloved New York.

Mr Lumet, who died on Saturday from cancer, was nominated four times unsuccessfully for a Best Director Academy Award with Dog Day Afternoon and Network numbering among his more than 40 movies.

“He was definitely the quintessential NY film-maker, although ironically his finest film, The Hill, was shot elsewhere,” Mr Allen said in a statement released to Entertainment Weekly.

“I’m constantly amazed how many films of his prodigious output were wonderful and how many actors and actresses did their best work under his direction. PS. Knowing Sidney, he will have more energy dead than most live people.”

Mr Lumet, who burst onto the scene at the age of 33 with 12 Angry Men in 1957, was eventually rewarded for a career that spanned five decades with an honorary Oscar in 2005. Al Pacino, who starred in the bungled bank robbery flick Dog Day Afternoon as well as Mr Lumet’s gritty police drama Serpico, said the director’s passing was a “great loss.”

“Sidney Lumet will be remembered for his films. He leaves a great legacy, but more than that, to the people close to him, he will remain the most civilised of humans and the kindest man I have ever known.”

Mr Lumet may be best remembered for Network, the poignant 1976 drama about American media depicting a frustrated television anchor, played by Peter Finch, who struggles to resuscitate a flagging television career and eventually goes mad on the air after being sacked.

He worked with some of the silver screen’s biggest stars, including Marlon Brando in The Fugitive Kind (1960) and Katherine Hepburn in Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962).