12 ANGRY MEN

12 Angry Men

Friday, August 22nd 2003 at Creek Park in San Anselmo

Showtime: 8:30 pm PRINT INFO! (coming soon)

Sponsored by Alan Cascio DDS

1957 95 min UA

“Pardon me, but don’t you ever sweat?” Juror #5 (Jack Klugman) asks Juror # 4 (E.G. Marshall) on what must be the hottest day of the year, in the hottest room in the hottest city, New York.

That room seems to get smaller and smaller as the action of 12 Angry Men gets more and more intense. And what is that action? Well, for the most part, it’s twelve men talking in one room for over 90 minutes.

No surprise that this year’s tribute to the character actor includes this film, which is a veritable feast of the best that stage or screen had to offer in the mid 1950s. This was the era when live television drama was centered in New York – and some of the most interesting smaller movies were being done in New York as well, with those same actors who were working in New York theatre and live TV.

When Henry Fonda and Reginald Rose wanted to produce Rose’s teleplay for the big screen, Fonda insisted on Sidney Lumet as director, even though Lumet had never directed a feature before. What he had directed were many television dramas, including ones for “Alcoa Hour” and “Studio One.”

12 Angry Men, claustrophobic as it was, was not to be much different than those soundstage-based shows, as it was essentially one set. Lumet and Fonda hired cinematographer Boris Kaufman to shoot the low-budget black and white film. Kaufman moved easily between television (Rod Serling’s “Patterns”) and the best-looking 1950s black and white features (such as Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront and the steamy Tennessee Williams screenplay Baby Doll). Kaufman came to Hollywood from Europe, where he had been a cinematographer in the golden age of French cinema, shooting for master Jean Vigo such films as his classic short Zero for Conduct, and doing some of the filming for the (now restored, and stunning-looking) L’Atalante. The partnership of Lumet and Kaufman would prove not only successful on this film but would be the beginning of a fruitful collaboration: they subsequently partnered on such films as Long Day’s Journey into Night, The Pawnbroker, and another Tennessee Williams adaptation, The Fugitive Kind.

But how do you film an entire movie in one room (except for about four minutes at the very beginning and end), and make it visually interesting? And how do you use the tools that film has to offer when your choices are so limited?

Lumet and Kaufman decided on a two-tiered visual plan to bring the audience into the psychological action of this film, which is essentially a courtroom drama with no courtroom (all of the action takes place in the jury room, as the jury decides the fate of the defendant after the trial). On the first level, they started with wider shots, and as the film progressed, used closer and closer shots. This way, we start by learning about the room, and the jurors’ positions around the table. We see how they are dressed, what their socio-economic levels are, what their attitudes and postures are. We see how they each relate to the room and to each other. We see how hot it is, that the fan doesn’t work, we see out the window. Then, as the film continues, we get more intimate with each juror, and Lumet is careful to give each of them equal screen time, whether they are speaking or simply reacting. Finally, in the last third of the film, we see the jurors’ faces more often in closeup. The suspense is more intense.

The other tier of the plan had to do with vertical space. For approximately the first third of the film, the camera is above eye level. The jurors are related visually to the table and their chairs. This camera angle also makes the room look larger. The middle portion of the film is shot fairly much at eye-level, and as the jurors begin challenging each other, we as the audience are almost challenging them, and are being challenged also, eye to eye. But in the last third of the film, there is an increasing number of shots from below eye level, often as if the camera was placed on the table. In the non-closeups, this allows certain jurors to seem to loom (Lee J. Cobb and Ed Begley, for instance). But it has another effect – it allows us to see the ceiling of the room in many shots (à la Orson Welles or John Ford), and, because this is done with longer lenses, the space is more compressed, it makes the room look more oppressive, as if the ceiling is coming down on the jurors’ heads. No wonder Lumet won an Oscar for Best Director his first time out.

Two other aspects of the film were necessary for its success, of course – a great script and a great cast. Reginald Rose, a veteran television writer, adapted his teleplay for the film and won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Rose had his greatest success during the Golden Age of Television, writing dozens of the best of the live 60 and 90 minute television dramas, and then with the early 1960s lawyer series, “The Defenders” (starring 12 Angry Men actor E.G. Marshall). Although he continued to write films, his career was less notable after that. He died a year ago this week (as of this writing).

As mentioned earlier, the cast was an assembly of some of the best character actors in the business. Interestingly, and in keeping with the “feel” of the piece, almost none of the jurors actually have names. Martin Balsam is Juror #1, the Foreman. You will remember him as Arbogast, the private investigator who finds out more than he wants to about Mrs. Bates in Psycho, and Holly’s friend O.J. Berman in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (both these films are also showing this summer as part of our character actor tribute).

Jack Klugman plays the street-wise Juror #5, who knows how to use a switchblade. Klugman is perhaps best known as one half of TV’s The Odd Couple, and can also be seen in some great performances on the original Twilight Zone. Equally at home with comedy and drama, he is one of television’s perennial character actors, appearing in hundreds of live classic television and series TV roles. One of his best performances, unfortunately, hasn’t been seen in almost fifty years: an outrageous dramatic performance in Rod Serling’s autobiographical television play, “The Velvet Alley.”

Lee J. Cobb, one of America’s greatest actors, originated the role of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman on-stage and repeated the role on television. His film and stage roles are too numerous to mention – just to hit a few highlights, there is Call Northside 777, Song of Bernadette, Anna and the King of Siam, On the Waterfront, Three Faces of Eve, Exodus, How the West was Won, Coogan’s Bluff, McKenna’s Gold, and for those of us TV boomers, for four years he played the judge on “The Virginian.”

Ed Begley was also a veteran actor of live TV drama, acting in over 25 of them in a concentrated period (including a great performance in the classic Rod Serling drama “Patterns”). His film career included character roles in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Sweet Bird of Youth, and Inherit the Wind.

John Fiedler, who, it seemed, specialized in being whiny and wimpy, is often recognized for his role as Mr. Peterson in the therapy group from “The Bob Newhart Show,” but his long film career (which started with 12 Angry Men) included roles in such films as World of Henry Orient, That Touch of Mink, The Odd Couple (in a role he originated on-stage and continued for the TV series), True Grit, Cannonball Run, and the underrated but excellent TV series “Buffalo Bill.”

Robert Webber, who plays the ad exec with the pipe, was a favorite of director Blake Edwards, who used him in 10, S.O.B., and Revenge of the Pink Panther. He also appeared in such films as The Dirty Dozen and Private Benjamin before his sudden and untimely death of a heart attack at 65.

Unlike everyone else in the film, 12 Angry Men was Joseph Sweeney’s last film. His first was a 1918 silent picture for Metro, Sylvia on a Spree. As an old man, Sweeney’s Juror #9 intrinsically understands the psychology of one of the witnesses, and thereby begins to break down a stalemate.

George Voskovec started his career in his native Czechoslovakia, then came to Hollywood and also had a career onstage. He appeared in Butterfield 8, The Boston Strangler, and the rare (but soon to be re-released) 1970s John Frankenheimer version of Eugene O’Neil’s The Iceman Cometh (with Lee Marvin, Frederick March, and Robert Ryan).

Ed Binns, who plays Juror #6 astute viewers may recognize as one of the policemen who investigates poor Roger Thornhill’s claims that he was abducted on Long Island early in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. He was also in Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe and in Judgment at Nuremburg.

And last but definitely not least, is the wonderful Jack Warden, who plays the cantankerous Juror #7. Warden started his career as a boxer, went into television during its golden age, and appeared in a huge number of live television dramas as well as lots of classic series television (“Route 66,” “Twilight Zone,” and the coach in the Wally Cox series “Mr. Peepers,” etc.). Everyone knows this man’s face. His film career spans five decades and over a hundred films, from From Here to Eternity (1953) to Bulworth (1998) and beyond.

If you’ve been waiting for a list of Henry Fonda’s credits, you can look them up yourself. He’s brilliant, as always, and was the driving force behind this project. He and Lumet would team up again before long to film another claustrophobic suspense yarn, Fail Safe; yet another “little masterpiece” that film students study to learn how to “do it right.”

12 Angry Men won the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year in 1958 in addition to the Best Screenplay and Best Director awards. It won numerous awards from foreign film festivals, including the Golden Bear from the Berlin Film Festival. It was a film Eleanor Roosevelt was fond of citing as one of her favorites.

And why not? How often do you get such a confluence of talent in just one room?

-- Kenn Rabin