TWELVE ANGRY MEN

SIDNEY LUMENT

1957

Twleve Angry Men continues our examination of personal beliefs and their impact on people’s behavior around the criminal justice system. This is an elaboration on the emic-etic theory discussed earlier and in a sense attempts to examine HOW the different perceptions come about.

The idea that the world is perceived differently by different individuals, groups of individuals and so on is to some degree the origin of postmodernism. Contemporary post modern theory in the social sciences holds that people doing analysis are prejudiced in what they see by their own histories and therefore no history or perception of the world is accurate but always biased. Worse some people hold that each perception is equally valid (whatever that means in this context). It is hard to know how two opposing perceptions can be equally valid. In effect one holds that a and ~a are equally valid. One of the Greek philosophers wrote “If you meet someone who believes both a and ~a you should not talk to them”.

This kind of argument (that all interpretations are equally valid) leads to problems as to whether there are “facts” or not. In effect, if nothing is knowable, what is the purpose of looking at anything anyway?

Postmodernism has also been held to “empower the powerless” in effect giving voice to all people equally. The question is what happens when these voices contradict one another? Can they be resolved from “facts” or are there no such things. If all theory is biased, then so is postmodernism – so why pay any more attention to that. By and large though (as is common) the people who hold the theory continue to apply it and argue that other theories are incorrect.

Twelve Angry Men

Twelve Angry Men was written by Reginald Rose for television and then became a play and a film. (late 40’s to late 50’s or early 60’s). Tv was live and a very hungry medium devouring scripts. Given the number of networks and the number of hours a day (about 16) the need for material was enormous. The result was that TV was willing to accept rather experimental material just to keep the time filled. While most programs were a half hour some were an hour and very few were 90 minutes.

The shows were largely live and and as result had more in common with Broadway than film. TV was based in NY where there was ample opportunity to get Broadway actors, so the relationship between TV and Broadway was rather symbiotic. Actors were available with Broadway training.

The studio system (from the 20’s to the middle fifties). The golden age fo films is generally seen as being in this period (1927/29–1948/49) As the system began to break down, people with projects (usually a script, a known star and director) would strike deals with the studios for which the studio would foot the cost of the production and take 30% of the profits from

American and Canadian distributions and 40% of foreign distributions.

Studio One did the broadcast of 20 Sept. 1954 with the following cast:

Sydney Lumet was a TV director who had studied “method acting”. This term applies to 2 different kinds of acting one taught by Canstatin Stanislavsky (Moscow Theater) the other by Lee Strassberg (The Actors Studio). While there are serious differences between the two they both emphasize acting and reacting, and a “realistic” emotional response produced by finding a specific emotion in oneself. They argue for looking at actual people in certain roles to pattern their actions after. The result is that Lumet tend s to favor actors performances in his films. This is not to say that his film work ignores other things, but it gives some priority to the acting. The camera follows actors who often having “business” that helps define the character. Composition links people in meaningful ways. Lumet works with long takes and deep focus.

Lumet also works with tight places and many of his films are in a closed area (The Pawn Shop in The Pawnbroker; the barracks in The Hill; The bank in Dog Day Afternoon etc.) In 12 Angry Men the claustrophobic feeling is accentuated by Lumet’s use of wide angles lenses at the beginning of the film which become longer and longer (towards telephoto) toward then end until much of the film is in close up.

The film is very an artifact of the 50s well known for the science fiction films in which the cold war tensions are represented by potential alien takeovers with films like The Thing being a rather right wing film in which the alien is bad and the military is right in what it does (right wing films often stress the military as correct and intellectuals as wrong). In 12 Angry Men, this is not the case. Juror 8 is an architect who builds a case here. The foreign juror is a watchmaker who sees time as a problem in the case. Occupation are significant as is the order in which jurors switch their positions, An elderly man, a foreigner and so on which marginalized people being the earlier ones to go over (the next to the last is a stock broker). The jury is all male with one foreigner but no Hispanics or African Americans on it. The defendant is a minority (maybe a Hispanic and perhaps Puerto Rican).

There are many symbols in the film: the fan and towel dispenser that don’t work; the rainstorm that comes as the vote goes to 6:6; the turning on the lights which coincidently starts the fan (things will cool off) etc.

The film clearly has a left wing bias coming down on the side of due process. Guilt or innocence is not knowable for sure. “facts” are open to debate. The stress in not on guilt or innocence is less important than the idea of “reasonable doubt”. There is much suggestion that many jurors are disinterested in what they are doing

While the argument is that the truth is not knowable and all that is needed is reasonable doubt, it becomes questionable whether or not there could ever be a conviction. This is a paradox of the system

QUESTION

In what ways id this film like Detective Story?