Day 26: 12 Angry Men (1957)

Movie #8 – 12 Angry Men (1957) - 96 min, cert U.

This is a curious little film to find so high up the list. It made quite a welcome break from the big budget blockbusters that have gone before.

It is essentially a courtroom drama, only without the actual courtroom. Apart from maybe a minute right at the start, and another minute or two at the very end, the entire film takes place in a single room. It is the room in which a jury of 12 men has been locked while they try to reach a unanimous verdict on a murder trial. At first glance, the trial appears to be an open-and-shut case and all the jurors are happy to return an immediate guilty verdict and be on their way. All, that is, except one man (Henry Fonda) who is uncomfortable about deciding the fate of a man’s life so casually and votes ‘Not guilty’ to force the others into further discussion. Needless to say, as these discussions progress, holes start to appear in the case for the prosecution and one by one the jurors change their minds, as the film heads towards its fairly obvious conclusion.

It doesn’t actually matter that we know exactly how the film is going to end barely 20 minutes in. It is the journey that’s important, not the destination. The film is an exploration of the benefits and the pitfalls of the American ‘Trial by Jury’ system, where a person’s fate is decided by a panel of 12 random strangers. The whole point of them being strangers is so that they have no preconceptions of the defendant’s character before the trial begins. The trouble is, of course, that they do have preconceptions. Rather than basing them on knowledge of the defendant’s history, they are based instead on racial and social stereotypes. These prejudices become exposed as the facts in the case gradually unravel, until they are all that remain to tie the accused to the crime.

It is worth noting that Sidney Lumet, the director, makes ingenious use of camera tricks to build the tension as the film progresses. A short focal length on a camera lens gives a scene much more depth as the background appears further away. As the film goes on, Lumet gradually changes his lenses to have longer and longer focal lengths, making the walls appear almost to close in around the characters, increasing the claustrophobic feel of the room as the tensions of the characters within it rise. As well as this, he gradually lowers the camera as the film goes on. At the start of the film, most of the shots are taken from high up near the ceiling, looking down on the jurors. Towards the end, the camera is down at table height and the characters loom oppressively over it, making it feel as if the ceiling too is closing in on us.

It was certainly an enjoyable film, although I’m not convinced it deserves to be quite as high up the list as it is. I think I shall give it 8/10 and place it above The Godfather.

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
2. Pulp Fiction (1994)
3. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
4. Schindler’s List (1993)
5. Inception (2010)
6. 12 Angry Men (1957)
7. The Godfather (1972)
8. The Godfather: Part II (1974)

Next on the list is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Again, I’ve seen this once before, but I think it was while I was at University twenty odd years ago, and I don’t think I can have been concentrating very hard as I remember very little about it. I shall have to see how much of it is familiar when I watch it again, probably on Friday night.