One Place Only: Twelve Angry Men (Dir Sidney Lumet, 1h35m, 1957)

Trials and the courtroom naturally lend themselves to works largely set within their walls: Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution not only makes for an excellent stage play, as it has since 1953, taking advantage of actual (former) courthouses to add to the prestige in its most recent London incarnation, but made for an excellent 1957 film directed by Billy Wilder. Elsewhere, Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and its spiritual successor, France's Anatomy of a Fall (Dir. Justine Triet, 2023), and the memorable A Few Good Men (Dir Rob Reiner, 1992) largely restrict themselves to the courtroom as battlegrounds of human fallibility, a disintegrating marriage, and the American military. Above all of these courtroom dramas are the duo of 1962's To Kill a Mocking Bird, which ironically features very little courtroom drama in it, and 1957's Twelve Angry Men, the quintessential cinematic chamberpiece.

The idea is simple: twelve men, unnamed, in New York, must consider the fate of a young man accused of murder. If found guilty, he will be sent to the electric chair. One man believes that they should discuss the case in detail before condemning a man to death, and from here the film considers the deliberations, and warring personalities of these twelve men as they argue over the young man's fate. The men are unnamed, the boy is unnamed, and but for the regional inferences; baseball, the local train line that later proves important in proving the boy's innocence, this could be any city in any state in North America, perhaps deliberately so. It is a universal work: the film beginning life as a television play for CBS' Studio One, written by Reginald Rose after serving on, and being affected by his experiences serving on a jury in New York. Rose would rework the play for mixed casts and female only productions late into his career, with Broadway and West End adaptions following. 

One of the watchers of the initial Studio One version in February 1955-by which time the teleplay had won three Emmys-would be Henry Fonda, who would promptly partner with Rose, and co-produce a film adaption; here Rose would add back material to the film cut for time from the television version. Sidney Lumet, no stranger to Rose, having adapted his previous plays, and having produced work for a number of TV series, was brought aboard to direct; he, together with Rose and cinematographer Boris Kaufman, who already held an Oscar for On the Waterfront (1954), shared a realist style that underpins the film's steady gaze into the mechanics of twelve men grouping together to decide a thirteenth's fate; through these twelve men, we see America in the 1950s.

One is struck by the mundane in Twelve Angry Men before any other of its social commentary comes to the fore; except for Fonda, none of these actors are stars, most are best known for their roles in this film. A murder has already occurred, there is no recreation of it-the film's only act of violence is a mild scuffle midway through proceedings, and the only stabbing is against the long jury table around which our twelve characters hold court. All the drama of the courtroom is behind us, and all that remains is the act of deciding what to make of it all. Small wonder it took years for its power as a piece of cinema to take hold, whilst its thunder in awards season was stolen by the far more bellicose action of Bridge on the River Kwai  (1957). It is a film of physicality, of heat, sweat smoke and faces, bodies that seem to cram into shot-deliberate, given throughout the film Kaufman is steadily increasing the focal range of his cameras, matching the narrative tension with physical claustrophobia. 

Yet, in this mundane location-the only breaks from its drab walls, save but for the faces of the twelve, is occasional glimpses outside as the day draws on and the weather changes-we cannot help but riveted by the performances. Chief of these is Fonda; this is arguably his vehicle, his decision to take a television movie to the big screen, but his performance, whilst stalwart, is that of quiet determination rather than grand acts; his belief in the system to do the right thing is as resolute as they come, even as he is mocked and cajoled by the men that will eventually be won over, juror by juror to his arguments. All this, despite the film being a silent invocation of the witchhunts of McCarthyism, and of the American justice system before civil liberties and civil rights in the 1960s. Much has been lain upon Fonda's white-jacketed shoulders, only revealed right at the end of the film, perhaps the film's most overt act of symbolism in an otherwise grounded film, but whether he be man, or something more, he is but a single figure in the film's narrative.

It is the film's other eleven characters, that form the backbone of the film. from the elderly man who is the first to side with Fonda's Juror No 8 (Joseph Sweeney), who has some of the most incisive moments of the entire film, to the polite, but patriotic immigrant (George Voskovec, who like Sweeney and several members of the cast, reprise their roles from the CBS television play), who defends the role of the jury, and its place in American society. Others are disinterested; the travelling salesman, No.7 (Jack Warden) like many of his compatriots at the start of the film, only wants the trial to be over to get to his baseball game, regardless of how the verdict goes. Whilst subsequent adaptions, most notably William Friedkin's 1997 TV film, represents the America of the relevant decades, there is something quite deceptive about the all white jury, with Rose's script slowly fleshing out every single one of these figures, from the highly analytical Juror no.4 (E. G. Marshall), who approaches everything with logic, to the flippant youth of Juror no. 12, who is often doodling and easily distracted.

Yet, against the slowly forming unity of the group, the collective belief that this case must be looked into, even if the results are the same, is prejudice; we see this most clearly from Juror 10 (Ed Begley), whose racist rant is the first moment that unites the rest of the jury, as they turn away in disgust. Yet, it is in the form of the cigar chomping Juror 3, (Lee J. Cobb), that Twelve Angry Men is at its most complex, considering not one man's moral standings, his prejudice, his dismissal of all young men, and, eventually, the reason for it, but all of America via these twelve men. The film echoes down through cinema to today; remakes set in India, Russia-who made the film shortly after adopting the jury system themselves- and adaptions in television series, books, and even a musical mean that it remains relevant, and vital, the great American story of liberty and justice. 

As the film slowly hems in, Lumet and Kaufman hold on their faces, on their expressions, on the sweat and heat, and on these men from the street and their role in deciding the fate of an unnamed young man; Twelve Angry Men remains a vital piece of American cinema, summarising an entire nation between the end of the Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement in the thought and actions of twelve men in a single jury room. 

Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)

Twelve Angry Men is available via Amazon Prime and on DVD from 20th Century Fox

Next week, a change of pace, as we take The Bullet Train, a high speed tale of tension set entirely aboard the Shinkansen. 

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