Roger Ebert - The Great Movies II

2001: A Space Odyssey

The 400 Blows

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

All About Eve

The Apartment

Apocalypse Now

The Apu Trilogy

Battleship Potemkin

Beauty and the Beast

Belle de Jour

The Bicycle Thief

The Big Sleep

Blow-up

Body Heat

Bonnie and Clyde

Bride of Frankenstein

Broken Blossoms

Casablanca

Chinatown

Citizen Kane

City Lights

Days of Heaven

The Decalogue

Detour

Do the Right Thing

Double Indemnity

Dracula

Dr. Strangelove

Duck Soup

E.T.

The Exterminating Angel

Fargo

Floating Weeds

Gates of Heaven

The General

The Godfather

Gone With the Wind

Grand Illusion

Greed

A Hard Days Night

Hoop Dreams

Ikiru

Its a Wonderful Life

JFK

La Dolce Vita

The Lady Eve

Last Year at Marienbad

LAtalante

LAvventura

Lawrence of Arabia

Le Samourai

M

The Maltese Falcon

Manhattan

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Metropolis

Mr. Hulots Holiday

My Darling Clementine

My Life to Live

Nashville

Network

The Night of the Hunter

Nosferatu

Notorious

On the Waterfront

Pandoras Box

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Peeping Tom

Persona

Pickpocket

Pinocchio

Psycho

Pulp Fiction

Raging Bull

Red River

Schindlers List

The Seven Samurai

The Seventh Seal

The Shawshank Redemption

The Silence of the Lambs

Singin in the Rain

Some Like It Hot

Star Wars

Sunset Blvd.

Sweet Smell of Success

Swing Time

Taxi Driver

The Third Man

Trouble in Paradise

Un Chien Andalou

The Up Documentaries

Vertigo

The Wild Bunch

Wings of Desire

The Wizard of Oz

Woman in the Dunes

A Woman Under the

Influence Written on the Wind

I n form, 12 Angry Men is a courtroom drama. In purpose, its a crash course in those passages of the Constitution that promise defendants a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. It has a kind of stark simplicity: Apart from a brief setup and a briefer epilogue, the entire film takes place within a small New York City jury room, on the hottest day of the year, as twelve men debate the fate of a young defendant charged with murdering his father. The film shows us nothing of the trial itself except for the judges perfunctory almost bored, charge to the jury. His tone of voice indicates that the verdict is a foregone conclusion. We hear neither prosecutor nor defense attorney, and learn of the evidence only secondhand, as the jurors debate it. Most courtroom movies feel it necessary to end with a clear-cut verdict. But 12 Angry Men never states whether the defendant is innocent or guilty. It is about whether the jury has a reasonable doubt about his guilt.

The principle of reasonable doubt, the belief that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty, is one of the most enlightened elements of our Constitution, although many Americans have had difficulty in accepting it. Its an open-and-shut case, snaps Juror No. 3 (Lee J. Cobb) as the jury first gathers in their claustrophobic little room. When the first ballot is taken, ten of his fellow jurors agree, and there is only one holdoutJuror No. 8 (Henry Fonda).

This is a film where tension comes from personality conflict, dialogue, and body language, not action; where the defendant has been glimpsed only in a single brief shot; where logic, emotion, and prejudice struggle to control the field. It is a masterpiece of stylized realismthe style coming in the way the photography and editing comment on the bare bones of the content. Released in 1957, when Technicolor and lush production values were common, 12 Angry Men was lean and mean. It got ecstatic reviews and a spread in Life magazine but was a disappointment at the box office. Over the years it has found a constituency, however, and in a 2002 Internet Movie Database poll it was listed twenty-third among the best films of all time.

The story, based on a television play by Reginald Rose, was made into a movie by Sidney Lumet, with Rose and Henry Fonda acting as co-producers and putting up their own money to finance it. It was Lumets first feature, although he was much experienced in TV drama, and the cinematography was by the veteran Boris Kaufman, whose credits (On the Waterfront, Long Days Journey into Night) show a skill for tightening the tension in dialogue exchanges. The cast included only one bankable star, Fonda, but the other eleven actors were among the best then working in New York, including Martin Balsam, Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Jack Warden, Ed Begley and Robert Webber. They smoke, they sweat, they swear, they sprawl, they stalk, they get angry.

In a length of only ninety-five minutes (it sometimes feels as if the movie is shot in real time), the jurors are all defined in terms of their personalities, backgrounds, occupations, prejudices, and emotional tilts. Evidence is debated so completely that we feel we know as much as the jury does, especially about the old man who says he heard the murder and saw the defendant fleeing, and the lady across the street who says she saw it happen through the windows of a moving El train. We see the murder weapon, a switchblade knife, and hear the jurors debate the angle of the knife wound. We watch as Fonda imitates the shuffling step of the old man, a stroke victim, to see if he could have gotten to the door in time to see the murderer fleeing. In its ingenuity, in the way it balances one piece of evidence against another that seems contradictory,