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12 Angry Men is a black-and-white film produced in 1957, and tells the story of twelve jurors bound by the
acceptance of their civic duty and thrust
together into a hot, humid room to
determine the guilt or innocence of a boy
accused of killing his father in a moment of rage. Initially, only one juror is
not certain, beyond a
reasonable doubt, that the young man is guilty. With the exception of a few
moments at the beginning and the end, the entire movie takes place in the
room.
A study of contrasts in human character under the stress of responsibility,
the movie stars Henry Fonda,
Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, John Fiedler, and E.G. Marshall, and is highly regarded from both a
critical and popular viewpoint; Roger Ebert lists it as one of his "Great Movies", and it has
been consistently ranked in the top 30 of the Internet Movie Database Top 250
List.
When 12 Angry Men was released, A. H. Weiler reviewed the film for The New York
Times. "It makes for taut, absorbing, and compelling drama that reaches far beyond the close confines of its
jury room setting". His observation of the twelve men was that "their dramas are
powerful and provocative enough to keep a viewer spellbound." Directed by Sidney
Lumet and adapted by Reginald Rose from his 1954 teleplay which was originally broadcast on CBS, the film was nominated for Academy Awards in the
categories of Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing,
Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. In all of these
categories, the film was eclipsed by The Bridge on the River Kwai,
which won seven Academy Awards that year. The cinematographer, Boris Kaufman, who hailed from Europe and
collaborated with French film producer Jean Vigo in Zéro de Conduite (1933) and L'Atalante (1934), was a previous Academy
Award winner for his work in On the Waterfront (1954), but was not nominated. Although today 12 Angry
Men is generally viewed as a "classic", at the time of its release the
advent of color and wide-screen productions contributed to its disappointing box
office performance.
12 Angry Men was a first for Lumet, Fonda, and Rose. It was Lumet's
first feature film, and
for Fonda and Rose, who co-produced the film, it was their first and only roles
as film producers.
The filming of 12 Angry Men was completed, after a rigorous rehearsal
schedule, in 19 days on a budget of $349,000. It begins with the use of cameras
positioned above eye level and mounted with wide-angle lenses to give the appearance of
greater depth between subjects; by the end of the film nearly everyone is shown
in closeup using telephoto
lenses from a lower angle, which decreases or "shortens" depth of field. Lumet,
who began his career as a director of photography, states that his intention in
using these techniques was to create a nearly palpable claustrophobia, and by most accounts he and
Kaufman succeeded admirably.
The screenplay was initially
produced for television, and was
broadcast on the program Studio
One in 1954. A complete kinescope of that performance, which
had been missing for years and feared lost, was finally discovered in 2003.
12 Angry Men was remade for
television in 1997 and starred George C. Scott, James Gandolfini, Tony Danza and Jack Lemmon. In this production
the judge is a woman and four of the jurors are African American; in most other aspects the
action and dialogue of the film is virtually identical to the original, with the
exception of a few modernisations such as the prohibition of smoking in the
room.
12 Angry Men is sometimes studied as literature. Some of the
screenplays have been published, and Rose wrote several stage adaptations of the
story. In 1964 Leo Genn appeared
in the play on the London stage. Other theatrical adaptations in which female
actors are cast as jurors are called 12 Angry Jurors or 12 Angry
Women.
The film was parodied on BBC television in an episode of Hancock's Half
Hour, which starred Tony Hancock and Sid James. In the USA, the film was paid homage in
2002 in the USA Network
production of The Dead Zone, titled
"Unreasonable Doubt." |
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