Boris Kaufman 12 Angry Men (1957)

Boris Kaufman, ASC (1906–1980) was the cinematographer on 12 Angry Men (1957). He came to the picture three years past his Academy Award for On the Waterfront (1954) and used the constrained jury-room set to extend a visual argument he had been making since the 1930s — that black-and-white photography could function as architecture rather than as image-making.

The youngest of the Kaufman brothers

Kaufman was born in Białystok in 1906, the youngest of three brothers. The eldest, Denis, became Dziga Vertov, the Soviet documentary theorist whose Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is one of the founding works of nonfiction cinema. The middle brother, Mikhail, was Vertov's cinematographer and shot most of the documentary work that defined Vertov's career. Boris emigrated to Paris in 1927, became Jean Vigo's cinematographer (À propos de Nice (1930), Zéro de conduite (1933), L'Atalante (1934)), and after Vigo's death and the Nazi occupation of France, fled to North America, where he would shoot Vertov's films from English. The Kaufman brothers were one of the great cinematic dynasties of the twentieth century, and Boris was the only one whose career bridged Soviet documentary, French poetic realism, and the postwar American studio system.

"Boris Kaufman is the kind of cinematographer who taught two cinemas. He learned with Vertov, refined with Vigo, and translated for Kazan. L'Atalante and On the Waterfront and 12 Angry Men are arguments by the same man, in three different languages." — Geoffrey O'Brien, The Criterion Collection — On the Waterfront essay (2013)

How Lumet got him

Kaufman had won the Academy Award for On the Waterfront (1954) and shot Elia Kazan's Baby Doll (1956). He was the most decorated black-and-white cinematographer in American film at the moment Sidney Lumet (in 12 Angry Men) was looking to staff his debut. Lumet, working from television, had no track record to offer. The hiring went through Henry Fonda's name and through producer Reginald Rose (in 12 Angry Men)'s production company. Kaufman accepted partly on the strength of the script.

The lens-length strategy was Kaufman's craft

The picture's most-discussed visual decision — the progressive lengthening of lenses across the running time — was Lumet's idea but Kaufman's execution. The room is approximately sixteen by twenty-four feet, too small for conventional coverage. Kaufman chose to shoot the early scenes on wide-angle 28mm and 25mm lenses, giving the room scale and visible ceiling height. By the middle of the film he had moved to 50mm. By the climax, Kaufman is on 75mm, 100mm, occasionally longer. The room visibly compresses without the audience consciously noticing. See Lumet's Lens-Length Strategy.

"Boris Kaufman knew exactly what each lens would do to the room. He would set up a shot, look through the camera, and say in his quiet way, 'Sidney, the ceiling is too high here. The men are too far apart. Let me try the longer lens.' He was the architect of the room's pressure." — Sidney Lumet, Making Movies (1995) (book; archive.org scan)

Black-and-white as geometry

Kaufman's compositional habits — established with Vigo, refined with Kazan — are visible in every scene of the deliberation. He composes for diagonal lines (the long table, the shadow of the table edge, the rake of the men's seated bodies) rather than for vertical or horizontal symmetry. He uses overhead lighting that gives the men sharp shadows on the table and almost no shadow on their faces, a documentary instinct carried over from On the Waterfront. The compositions read as architecture: each frame has a center of gravity that points to the next juror about to speak. See Boris Kaufman's Black-and-White Geometry.

"The photography is so good in this picture that you stop noticing it. You only notice it when you go back and watch the film again, and you realize that every frame was constructed." — Vincent LoBrutto, Sidney Lumet: A Life of Cinema (2019) (book; archive.org scan)

After 12 Angry Men, the Lumet partnership continued

Kaufman shot eight more Lumet films after the debut: Stage Struck (1958), That Kind of Woman (1959), The Fugitive Kind (1960), Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), The Pawnbroker (1965), The Group (1966), and Bye Bye Braverman (1968). The partnership is one of American film's longest sustained director–DP collaborations of the postwar era. Kaufman also shot Splendor in the Grass (1961, Kazan), The World of Henry Orient (1964, George Roy Hill), and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970, Otto Preminger). He died in New York in 1980.

Selected filmography

Year	Film	Director	Notes
1934	L'Atalante	Jean Vigo
1954	On the Waterfront	Elia Kazan	Best Cinematography Oscar
1956	Baby Doll	Kazan	Oscar nomination
1957	12 Angry Men	Sidney Lumet	Lumet's debut
1962	Long Day's Journey Into Night	Lumet
1965	The Pawnbroker	Lumet
1968	Bye Bye Braverman	Lumet