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12 Angry Men
Retrospectives
- January 2003
USA, 1957. Directed by Sidney Lumet. Written
by Reginald Rose. Photographed by Boris Kaufman. Edited by Carl Lerner. Music
by Kenyon Hopkins. Released by United Artists. 96
minutes.
Starring Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley,
E.G. Marshall, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, Jack Klugman, Edward
Binns, Joseph Sweeney, George Voskovec, Robert Webber.
Once you decide upon your favourite film, you
might find that it takes on legendary proportions in the mind and simply
becomes a part of your identity. I am now so accustomed to calling "12
Angry Men" my favourite that no other title would seem quite right.
There are other contenders -- "E.T.", "Amadeus", "Double Indemnity", "Sullivan's
Travels" -- but somehow I can never bring myself to think of renaming the
top spot.
The film's scenario is easily described: Twelve
men sit in a New York City jury room, assigned to a case where the death
penalty will be mandatory in the event of a conviction. An eighteen-year
old slum kid stands accused of murdering his father. The evidence seems
insurmountable. In the preliminary ballot, there are eleven votes for a guilty
verdict. The one holdout is Juror #8, played by Henry Fonda. "You really
think he's innocent?" asks another man. Fonda: "I don't know."
We never see the trial, save for the judge's final
instructions to the jury, in which his honour recites profound declarations
with the look of a man whose great desire is an afternoon nap. Apart from
the brief courtroom introduction, and a short closing moment on the courthouse
steps, the whole movie takes place inside the jury room, with the dozen men
shouting their opinions.
The fact that we never stray from the evidence,
and the script never provides outside information to conclusively tell us
whether the defendant is innocent or guilty, signals one of the key points
of the material, which is that the presumption of innocence and the principle
of reasonable doubt are unshakably important. Law was created for no other
reason than to protect us, and protection against the entanglement of law
itself is as theoretically important as shelter from potential crime. The
job of the criminal justice system is not simply to allow a bunch of guys
off the street to offer opinion, although clearly many juries operate that
way, or miscarriages of justice would never happen. The jury system exists
so that objective citizens are an essential component of deciding whether
or not a criminal charge has been proven to be fact. If the evidence of
prosecutors does not determine that no other theory is possible, then who
has the right to do anything but set the defendant free?
Some of the characters in "12 Angry Men" see it
that way, and others do not. Fonda wants simply to go over the evidence and
make sure it is airtight: "We can't decide it in five minutes. Supposing
we're wrong." Others cannot understand why a case with a murder weapon and
an alleged eyewitness is anything but open-and-shut. "You're wasting everybody's
time in here," says the guy at the end of the table. "You couldn't change
my mind if you talked for a hundred years." From some in the room, there
is explicit aggression at the idea of actually bothering to be
thorough.
But the men do talk, and as conversation progresses,
and evidence is scrutinised for flaws, personalities emerge. Fonda plays
a liberal everyman, a strongly principled figure concerned with calm discourse
about the relevant facts of the case -- we instinctively project and identify,
because he sticks to his guns in a way that is plain, simple and admirable.
Juror #3 (Lee J. Cobb) is the man with whom Fonda enters into something of
a battle of wills; he's the angriest of all twelve, not only a keen observer
of the evidence, but a guy who seems terrified or offended by the defendant,
largely because of personal scars that eventually become
clear.
The foreman (Martin Balsam) is a high school football
coach, more interested in keeping things in good order than offering his
own input. He pays attention to the conversation, but not once in the film
does he bring up a point of his own. Juror #2 (John Fiedler) is the bank
clerk with the Porky Pig voice, who starts out hesitant and eventually speaks
up, remembering evidence that bothered him but ended up being shyly shelved
at the back of his mind. E.G. Marshall plays #4, the stockbroker with the
poker face, who sits, observes, refuses to get riled and acts like he's seen
it all before. Juror #5 (Jack Klugman) is a self-conscious and nervous young
kid from the poor side of town, with sensitivity to crass remarks about the
defendant's slum background. Juror #6 (Edward Binns) is the other blue-collar
guy on the team -- an older man, willing to listen, with calmer recognition
of his own strengths and weaknesses. Juror #9 (Joseph Sweeney) is the old
man who seems to have reflected on human nature while looking at witnesses,
and relates his observations with thoughtfulness and clarity. Juror #11 (George
Voskovec) is a well-mannered watchmaker from Eastern Europe, an immigrant
to the United States who has less weariness of Western systems than awe at
their potential. Sitting in the corner is Juror #12 (Robert Webber), an ad
exec, familiar with the conference table set-up, and perhaps confused by
the fact that nobody seems wowed by his experience.
If there are any villains in the piece, they come
in the form of Jurors #7 (Jack Warden) and #10 (Ed Begley), who relate to
their colleagues by cracking nasty wisecracks and discussing the evidence
with impatience. The crime of the latter man is bigotry and threatening temper.
The other guy is shockingly indifferent; he throws around sports metaphors
in all conversations, and wants things wrapped up quick because he has tickets
to a baseball game.
The characters in Reginald Rose's script, which
was adapted from his own teleplay, are a contrived cross-section of society,
with men of assorted ages, professions and backgrounds all conveniently at
hand. But they do not come across as stereotypes, because Rose, the actors,
and the director, Sidney Lumet, had a clear sense of how these men would
react to being in this jury room, discussing this case, stifled by this weather
on the hottest day of the year. There are speeches made, but the film does
not rely on them -- much is related through body language, and even when
characters are not in the foreground, we can look to the sides of frames
and observe their natures. Notice how Webber, for example, is always trying
to keep himself in some kind of dashing, sharp-suited pose. Or think about
one of the many moments of dry humour in the film, when the edgy Klugman
asks the unruffled Marshall, "Pardon me, but, don't you ever sweat?" It's
funny that, when he says it, we know exactly what he means.
The dialogue and filmmaking do brilliant jobs
of illustrating the evidence that was presented at the trial, capturing the
personalities of the men, noting the dynamics that their traits create with
each other and making it all seem spontaneous. There is a mass of information
to be imparted to the audience, but never does it come across as confusing
or methodical. It just seems to happen, until it coils and springs in the
way that great drama should.
Lumet's camera manages to keep attention on those
speaking while gauging the mood of the room. Instead of roaming around a
lot, or going for a dozen reaction shots after every line, his angles stay
varied and give the men more or less equal time. The biggest compliment that
can be paid to the film assembly is that we do not notice it. Shooting a
film with a dozen fleshed-out characters in one small room is far from an
easy task. Here, it is made to look effortless.
The choices of shots do not just help us feel
immersed in the setting; they're vital to the arc of the story. Lumet, and
his cinematographer, Boris Kaufman, devised the film as a 'lens plot', shooting
in gradually longer lenses, so that as the story progressed, there would
be a sensation of the room getting smaller. Further, they shot the first
third of the film predominantly above eye level, the middle passages at eye
level and the third below eye level, meaning the ceiling eventually became
visible, and that too seemed to be closing in. In addition, the use of sweaty
close-ups becomes greater as the conclusion gets closer, pushing us further
into faces, and with them the passions of arguments. It is important to note
that I know all this because a) I own a copy of Lumet's book "Making Movies",
and b) I have flipped through chapters on the DVD, and been able to absorb
how the look of "12 Angry Men" subtly changes alongside the progression of
its acts. When actually watching the film, we do not see crafty technique,
just charged emotion.
At the time of this article, Sidney Lumet is 78,
and, with approximately fifty films currently under his belt, continues to
be one of the most interesting and prolific artists in the field. His titles
include a remarkable amount of classics, including "Dog Day Afternoon",
"Network", "Murder on the Orient Express", "Serpico", "The Hill", "Fail-Safe",
"Prince of the City" and "The Verdict". The films often appear on lists of
the greats, while Lumet himself does not, perhaps because his hallmark is
examining weighty themes and exploring tough modern situations, rather than
personalising things with grand cinematic flourishes.
"12 Angry Men" was the director's first feature,
and yet it continues to stand tall at the top of his filmography. It was
not a box-office success in 1957, but it got nominated for three Oscars
(including Best Picture), won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival,
garnered much critical praise and received commendation from Eleanor Roosevelt.
Today, it is used in high schools and universities to provoke discussions
on topics ranging from ethics to the criminal justice system to method acting.
The American Film Institute had it on their recent list of the best thrillers
of all time.
Indeed it is a thriller -- one that works up tension
through conversation, and revolves around personalities, values and morals.
Ultimately, those are things that are easier to follow than action or adventure
-- and more absorbing, and more resonant. Many people today are reluctant
to see black-and-white movies, let alone those based around talking, but
I find it hard to imagine a mind that would give this movie a chance and
end up being bored. It shows human beings discussing vital things in a manner
that is perfectly easy to follow. The black-and-white has the strange effect
of making it seem realistic and timeless. It is forty-six years old, and
yet William Friedkin's six-year old remake, filmed in colour that captures
the heat almost tackily, is the film that seems more dated.
"12 Angry Men" may seem a strange choice for the
favourite of someone who spends his time writing about movies. It's a one-set
play, and perhaps I am expected to go for a picture like "2001: A Space Odyssey",
whose visuals are more essential to the medium of film. The best explanation
I can offer is that cinema selects and manipulates images to end up a more
intimate experience than theatre. This material could be played on stage,
and has been, but not with the same directness and force. The nature of the
story -- its capturing of human nature, its reliance on big issues like justice,
life and death, the importance of individual action -- works with the finite
boundaries of the screen to become an intense concentration of power. Every
time I watch the movie, I am struck by its sheer charge.
A further, more personal, explanation would be
that this film taps into my sense of true believerism. My view of our world
is basically that we're in a big mess: Wealth is held by few, and to a large
extent dependent on the suffering of many. Leaders work through systems that
force them to lie and compromise, while prophets tend to sell out or die
young. We are creatures built to destroy each other, because rage is an essential
component of our construction. Our current way of living, in terms of population
growth and environmental treatment, will before long make living on this
planet untenable. And on, and so on, until it becomes too overwhelming to
comprehend. All this is part of my thinking, and yet the side that allows
me to go on living says that we're all trying our best, and in ways society
is pushed forward all the time, and most of us are united by certain essential
truths, and there is enough brightness in humanity to steer us right whenever
we seem about to crash.
"12 Angry Men" relates to such rambling thoughts
because it sees all the frailty and narrowness of man, and yet convincingly
depicts how principle can sometimes prevail in the most difficult situations.
I am not sure whether that makes it escapism or truth. This in itself is
inspiring.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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