12 Angry Men [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Sidney Lumet

Overview

A Puerto Rican youth is on trial for murder, accused of knifing his father to death. The twelve jurors retire to the jury room, having been admonished that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Eleven of the jurors vote for conviction, each for reasons of his own. The sole holdout is Juror #8, played by Henry Fonda. As Fonda persuades the weary jurors to re-examine the evidence, we learn the backstory of each man. Juror #3 (Lee J. Cobb), a bullying self-made man, has estranged himself from his own son. Juror #7 (Jack Warden) has an ingrained mistrust of foreigners; so, to a lesser extent, does Juror #6 (Edward Binns). Jurors #10 (Ed Begley) and #11 (George Voskovec), so certain of the infallibility of the Law, assume that if the boy was arrested, he must be guilty. Juror #4 (E.G. Marshall) is an advocate of dispassionate deductive reasoning. Juror #5 (Jack Klugman), like the defendant a product of "the streets," hopes that his guilty vote will distance himself from his past. Juror #12 (Robert Webber), an advertising man, doesn't understand anything that he can't package and market. And Jurors #1 (Martin Balsam), #2 (John Fiedler) and #9 (Joseph Sweeney), anxious not to make waves, "go with the flow." The excruciatingly hot day drags into an even hotter night; still, Fonda chips away at the guilty verdict, insisting that his fellow jurors bear in mind those words "reasonable doubt." A pet project of Henry Fonda's, Twelve Angry Men was his only foray into film production; the actor's partner in this venture was Reginald Rose, who wrote the 1954 television play on which the film was based. Carried over from the TV version was director Sidney Lumet, here making his feature-film debut. A flop when it first came out (surprisingly, since it cost almost nothing to make), Twelve Angry Men holds up beautifully when seen today. It was remade for television in 1997 by director William Friedkin with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott.

Product Details

Release Date:	11/22/2011
UPC:	0715515089210
Original Release:	1957
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:36:00
Sales rank:	8,065

Special Features

New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Frank Schaffner's 1955 television version, with an introduction by Ron Simon, surator at the Paley Center for Media; Production history of 12 Angry Men, from teleplay to big-screen classic; Archival interviews with director Sidney Lumet; New interview with screenwriter Walter Bernstein about Lumet; New interview with Simon about writer Reginald Rose; Tragedy in a Temporary Town (1956), a teleplay directed by Lumet and written by Rose; New interview with cinematographer John Bailey about director of photography Boris Kaufman; Original theatrical trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Martin Balsam	Geschworener Nr. 1
John Fiedler	Geschworener Nr. 2
Lee J. Cobb	Geschworener Nr. 3
E.G. Marshall	Geschworener Nr. 4
Jack Klugman	Geschworener Nr. 5
Edward Binns	Geschworener Nr. 6,Actor
Jack Warden	Geschworener Nr. 7
Henry Fonda	Geschworener Nr. 8
Joseph Sweeney	Geschworener Nr. 9
Ed Begley	Geschworener Nr. 10
George Voskovec	Geschworener Nr. 11
Robert Webber	Geschworener Nr. 12
Rudy Bond	Richter
James A. Kelly	W?chter
Billy Nelson	Gerichtsschreiber
John Savoca	Angeklagter
Walter Stocker	Man Waiting for Elevator
Reginald Rose	Actor
Boris Kaufman	Actor
Bill Nelson	Court Clerk
Kenyon Hopkins	Composer

Technical Credits

Reginald Rose

Reginald Rose	Screenwriter,Producer
Henry Fonda	Producer
George Justin	Producer

Editorial Reviews

A splendidly realized film adaptation of a dramatic classic from television's Golden Age, 12 Angry Men is guaranteed to rivet the attention of even the most casual viewer, despite its claustrophobic one-room setting and lack of physical action. Reginald Rose's adaptation of his own teleplay opens on a hot summer day in a New York courthouse, where 12 jurors retire to a small, stifling room to deliberate the fate of a teenage boy accused of murdering his father. The first ballot finds quietly dignified Henry Fonda the lone holdout for acquittal. Blustery Lee J. Cobb leads the charge for conviction, and it remains for the other ten -- played by distinguished character actors Ed Begley, E. G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, George Voskovec, Robert Webber, Edward Binns, and Joseph Sweeney -- to be swayed by the grimly determined Fonda. The feature-film directorial debut of Sidney Lumet (Fail-Safe), 12 Angry Men derives its dramatic strength not only from his economic, incisive handling of a powerhouse cast, but also from Rose's sharply limned character studies. This 1957 film has been remade and reworked several times, but none of the subsequent versions has ever approached the original's perfection.