Reel Classics: 12 Angry Men

12 Angry Men opens with the tri­al of a young man accused of mur­der­ing his father com­ing to an end.  We wit­ness the judge turn­ing the process over to the jury to deter­mine the young man’s fate.  If found inno­cent, he will walk out of the court­room a free man.  If found guilty, he will face the manda­to­ry sen­tence of death.  His fate is now in the hands of what we will learn are 12 angry men. 

The evi­dence ini­tial­ly points to an easy decision—an open and shut case.  There are wit­ness­es, there is the mur­der weapon, and there is a his­to­ry of tem­per out­bursts between son and father.  The jurors are gath­ered in the swel­ter­ing heat of the jury room, most expect­ing a quick deci­sion and an ear­ly exit.  One is anx­ious­ly antic­i­pat­ing the Yankees base­ball game that evening, dis­play­ing the tick­ets from his pock­et.  However, the out­come of the ini­tial vote is a sur­prise to the jurors.  Eleven vote guilty, but one votes not guilty.  It is at this point that we begin to see the anger rise in the jurors. 

Henry Fonda plays the role of the lone juror vot­ing not guilty. He tells them he is not con­vinced of the young man’s guilt, though he admits the evi­dence on the sur­face is over­whelm­ing.  But he points out that the fate of this young man, be it life or death, is in their hands and he feels they should dis­cuss the case. 

As the dis­cus­sion pro­ceeds, we begin to get a more in-depth look at the per­son­al­i­ties of the indi­vid­ual jurors—referred to pri­mar­i­ly by their num­ber.  Henry Fonda is Juror #8.  We iden­ti­fy the var­i­ous jurors by their report­ed voca­tions, such as “the high school foot­ball coach,” “the stock­bro­ker” and “the garage own­er.”  As dis­cus­sion and debate con­tin­ues, we see the prej­u­dices and pre­con­ceived notions of the jurors relat­ed both to the accused (a teen from a pover­ty-strick­en neigh­bor­hood) and to each oth­er.  As more detail is exam­ined from the evi­dence pre­sent­ed, oth­ers in the room begin to have “rea­son­able doubt.” 

12 Angry Men was released in 1957 and was adapt­ed from a tele­play aired in 1954 writ­ten by Reginald Rose.  He also adapt­ed the screen­play for the film.  Sidney Lumet was the direc­tor, and this was his ini­tial effort at direct­ing a fea­ture film.  The tele­vi­sion script was large­ly unchanged in the adap­ta­tion for the film.  Henry Fonda was asked to por­tray Juror #8 by the stu­dio, United Artists, and he also served as pro­duc­er of the film.  The cast of jurors was com­posed of many well-known actors, includ­ing Martin Balsam, Ed Begley, Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, and Jack Warden. 

All but three min­utes of the film was shot in the con­fines of the jury room.  The set was made to appear and feel con­fin­ing.  This was thought to add to the sense of pres­sure felt by the jurors in reach­ing con­sen­sus.  Reportedly the writer, Reginald Rose, was inspired by his own expe­ri­ence serv­ing as a juror on a manslaugh­ter case. 

12 Angry Men received praise from crit­ics and was nom­i­nat­ed for three Academy Awards, includ­ing Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay.  The crit­ic for The New York Times wrote “It makes for taut, absorb­ing, and com­pelling dra­ma that reach­es far beyond the close con­fines of its jury room set­ting.”  He wrote of the twelve jurors, “their dra­mas are pow­er­ful and provoca­tive enough to keep a view­er spell­bound.”  Variety found it “an absorb­ing dra­ma” and stat­ed of the act­ing per­for­mances “per­haps the best seen recent­ly in any sin­gle film.”  The Los Angeles Times report­ed it to be a “tour de force in movie mak­ing.”  The crit­ic for The New Yorker described it as “a fair­ly sub­stan­tial addi­tion to the cel­lu­loid land­scape.”  12 Angry Men even got a spread in the very pop­u­lar mag­a­zine Life.

Unfortunately for the mak­ers of the film, it was a dis­ap­point­ment at the box office.  Some think that the rise in pop­u­lar­i­ty of col­or and widescreen pro­duc­tions may have impact­ed the com­mer­cial appeal.  This was Henry Fonda’s ini­tial effort at pro­duc­ing a film, and his expe­ri­ence and frus­tra­tion con­tributed to his deci­sion not to pro­duce any oth­er films.  It was report­ed that he was upset with United Artists and their dis­tri­b­u­tion efforts.  He felt it should play small­er the­aters but instead went into larg­er set­tings, fail­ing to fill the the­aters.  Though the film, when released in 1957, was crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed, it is believed that the appear­ance on tele­vi­sion in lat­er years brought a new fan inter­est to it.

In many ways the themes in the film ring very true today.  Prejudice and assump­tions about peo­ple based on their eth­nic­i­ty, income lev­el, liv­ing sit­u­a­tions, and so forth ring as true today.  I’ll share with you a cou­ple of quotes from the film.

Juror #10:  “Bright? He’s a com­mon igno­rant slob.  He don’t even speak good English!”

Juror #11: “Doesn’t even speak good English.”

And anoth­er telling quote: 

Juror #10:  “I don’t under­stand you peo­ple!  I mean all these picky lit­tle points you keep bring­ing up.  They don’t mean noth­in’.  You saw this kid just like I did.  You’re not gonna tell me you believe that pho­ny sto­ry about los­ing the knife, and that busi­ness about being at the movies.  Look, you know how these peo­ple lie!  It’s born in them!  I mean what the heck?!  I don’t even have to tell you.  They don’t know what the truth is!  And, lemme tell you, they don’t need any real big rea­son  to kill some­one, either!  No sir!”

Juror #8:  “It’s very hard to keep per­son­al prej­u­dice out of a thing like this.  And no mat­ter where you run into it, prej­u­dice obscures truth.  Well, I don’t think any real dam­age has been done here.  Because I don’t real­ly know what the truth is.  No one ever will, I sup­pose.  Nine of us now seem to feel that the defen­dant is inno­cent, but we’re just gam­bling on prob­a­bil­i­ties.  We may be wrong.  We may be try­ing to return a guilty man to the com­mu­ni­ty.  No one can real­ly know.  But we have a rea­son­able doubt, and this is a safe­guard which has enor­mous val­ue to our sys­tem.  No jury can declare a man guilty unless it’s sure.  We nine can’t under­stand how you three are still so sure.  Maybe you can tell us.”

12 Angry Men was iden­ti­fied by Henry Fonda as one of his three best movies, even though it did not do well at the box office.  His oth­er two favorites were The Grapes of Wrath (1940)and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943).  I think that if you are famil­iar with these films, you will see a com­mon bond between the three. 

Interestingly, this film is uti­lized in train­ing by var­i­ous busi­ness schools and work­shops to point out team dynam­ics and  con­flict res­o­lu­tion meth­ods.  Prior to the orig­i­nal release to the­aters a pre­view of the film was pro­vid­ed to the State Bar Associations.  After it’s release, the American Bar Association hon­ored the film for “con­tribut­ing to greater pub­lic under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of the American sys­tem of jus­tice.”  In 2010, speak­ing at the Fordham University Law School film fes­ti­val, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor stat­ed that see­ing the film while she was in col­lege influ­enced her deci­sion to go into law as a career.  She stat­ed that she was very inspired by the state­ment of Juror # 11 (an immi­grant) regard­ing his appre­ci­a­tion for the American sys­tem of justice. 

As men­tioned above, 12 Angry Men first appeared on tele­vi­sion, the CBS pro­gram Studio One.  It was broad­cast in September 1954 and starred Robert Cummings as Juror #8.  The theme from the film has found its way onto sev­er­al oth­er TV shows.  An episode of The Andy Griffith Show in 1960 found Aunt Bee as the lone juror vot­ing “not guilty” and fac­ing the wrath of 11 angry men.  Sheriff Andy Taylor dis­cov­ers the real crim­i­nal, and the accused (Jack Nicholson) is kept from being wrong­ly found guilty.  Another show was The Dick Van Dyke Show where Rob Petrie was the lone hold­out in the jury delib­er­at­ing on the fate of an exot­ic dancer (Sue Ann Langdon) on tri­al for dia­mond smug­gling.  That episode also took a fun­ny stab at anoth­er pop­u­lar TV show, Perry Mason.  Here the pros­e­cu­tor was named Mason, and the defense attor­ney was named Burger.

Roger Ebert has list­ed 12 Angry Men as one of his “Great Movies.”  American Film Institute lists Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) on a list of the “50 Greatest Movie Heroes of the 20^th Century,” and the film on its list of Best Films of the Last 100 Years.  American Film Institute also lists it as #2 in its Top Ten List of court­room dra­mas (To Kill a Mockingbird is #1).

I believe 12 Angry Men is as rel­e­vant in today’s soci­ety where we still bat­tle with prej­u­dices, stereo­types and bias­es based on race, income, sex­u­al iden­ti­ty and eth­nic­i­ty to name a few.  I believe we could ben­e­fit from more dis­cus­sion and less rant­i­ng, and this film brings that con­cept to light.  If you are not famil­iar with it, I encour­age you to check it out.  And, if you have seen it before, I think you may find it will be a good one to return to once more.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates 12 Angry Men at 9 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a crit­ics score of 100% and an audi­ence score of 97%. 

I searched my Roku for free stream­ing and found the film avail­able on Kanopy (no ads), Tubi, Pluto and ROKU Channel. The Clark County Public Library has a copy of the DVD on the shelf.

If you enjoy these old­er films, please join me for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics” at the Clark County Public Library.  On the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 pm, I show a clas­sic com­e­dy film (such as Laurel & Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Marx Brothers, and Abbott & Costello, to name a few).  Usually there is an accom­pa­ny­ing clas­sic car­toon, and the library pro­vides pop­corn and drinks.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page.

Until the next Reel Classic, enjoy the trail­er below.