12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Angry Men (1957)

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (12 Angry Men) | Backbeats (12 Angry Men)

Quick Facts

  • Director: Sidney Lumet
  • Screenplay: Reginald Rose (from his 1954 teleplay for CBS's Studio One)
  • Starring: Henry Fonda (Juror 8 / Davis), Lee J. Cobb (Juror 3), Ed Begley (Juror 10), E.G. Marshall (Juror 4), Jack Klugman (Juror 5), Jack Warden (Juror 7), Martin Balsam (Juror 1, the foreman), John Fiedler (Juror 2), Joseph Sweeney (Juror 9, the old man), George Voskovec (Juror 11, the immigrant watchmaker), Robert Webber (Juror 12, the ad man), Edward Binns (Juror 6)
  • Cinematography: Boris Kaufman
  • Editor: Carl Lerner
  • Music: Kenyon Hopkins
  • Runtime: 96 minutes
  • Budget: approximately $350,000
  • US Box Office: approximately $1 million (initial release; widely distributed since)
  • Release Date: April 10, 1957 (US)
  • MPAA Rating: Not rated at original release; later rated G
  • Distributor: United Artists

Overview

Twelve men retire to a stifling Manhattan jury room to decide whether a teenage boy from a slum will go to the electric chair for stabbing his father,b1 and on the first vote eleven say guilty. Henry Fonda's Juror 8 holds the lone "not guilty"b4 — not because he is sure the boy is innocent, but because he is not sure he is guilty, and the procedural obligation to be sure is the only fact he refuses to compromise. Reginald Rose's screenplay (adapted from his 1954 teleplay) confines the action to the deliberation room across roughly ninety real-time minutes, and Sidney Lumet, in his feature debut, choreographs the room as a closing trap: lenses lengthen, the ceiling lowers, the heat rises, and the men whose certainty was loudest at the start are the ones most exposed by the end. Lee J. Cobb's Juror 3 supplies the values arc — a father whose estrangement from his own son has been quietly running the conviction the whole time, broken open in the final scene by a torn photograph. The film is read as a defense of the deliberative process, an indictment of class and racial bias dressed as common sense, and a study of how reasonable doubt actually behaves under pressure when one person refuses to let the room close.