![]() ![]() They smoke, they sweat, they swear, they sprawl, they stalk, they get angry. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Jack Warden, Ed Begley and Robert Webber. The cast included only one bankable star, Fonda, but the other 11 actors were among the best then working in New York, including Martin Balsam, Lee J. It was Lumet's 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 Day's Journey into Night") show a skill for tightening the tension in dialogue exchanges. The story is based on a television play by Reginald Rose, later 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. Over the years it has found a constituency, however, and in a 2002 Internet Movie Database poll it was listed 23rd among the best films of all time. It got ecstatic reviews and a spread in Life magazine, but was a disappointment at the box office. Released in 1957, when Technicolor and lush production values were common, "12 Angry Men" was lean and mean. It is a masterpiece of stylized realism-the style coming in the way the photography and editing comment on the bare bones of the content. 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. When the first ballot is taken, 10 of his fellow jurors agree, and there is only one holdout-Juror No. ![]() Cobb) as the jury first gathers in their claustrophobic little room. "It's an open and shut case," snaps Juror No. 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. ![]()
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