J Paul Johnson
The Criterion Collection continues its catalog upgrades this September with a new 4K UHD remastering of one of its more complete Special Editions, its Spine 591, 12 Angry Men. For those who already own the extant Blu-ray version, this new remaster provides a visual upgrade to the main feature; all of the prior edition’s packaging and supplements remain the same as they had in 2011. Both versions remain available for purchase, at different price points, but there’s no denying the sheer power and audacity of Sidney Lumet’s audacious directorial debut—without question one of cinema’s most powerful and incendiary courtroom dramas ever.
And lest one think this 1957 adaptation of a television play dated or in the slightest irrelevant, consider how even today a lone holdout juror can and has by their lonesome warranted a mistrial, as in the case of the Lindsay Clancy trial that has held the US in sway for five weeks and nearly 40 hours of jury deliberations. Sure, in 1957 you might just have had a jury comprised entirely of adult white males determining the fate of a young Puerto Rican boy, but the basic conceit of a narrative told in a single claustrophobic setting of volatile strangers forced to cooperate is as both as old as Plato’s Republic and as reliable a storytelling vehicle as there is.
On the surface, 12 Angry Men ticks its clock steadfastly towards a verdict. Eleven jurors are ready to convict; only Juror 8, Henry Fonda, is hesitant. He isn’t certain of the boy’s innocence—the lad stands accused of stabbing his father to death with a switchblade—but Juror 8 is determined to review the evidence and make a deliberate determination one way or the other. His patience is contrasted with the impertinence of several other jurors, especially the twitchy Juror 12 (Jack Warden), who has tickets to the ballgame that evening, and the boisterous, confident Juror 3 (Lee J. Cobb), who’s absolutely convinced of the boy’s guilt.
One by one, Fonda’s Juror 8 disarms the others, planting seeds of doubt as to the strength of the evidence. An eyewitness might not be reliable; a murder weapon might not be unique; a prosecutor’s timeline might not be viable. Each of them, for reasons carefully established by screenwriter Reginald Rose’s sharp screenplay, slowly begins to question his own assumptions as well as the all-too-convenient case laid out by the prosecution. By the third act, the tally is again 11-1, but now Fonda’s Juror 8 is the majority vote for acquittal, and Lee J. Cobb’s Juror 3 is the last lone holdout demanding a conviction.
Cobb is as he had been in On the Waterfront a great antagonist, full of bluster, throwing his weight around with a sweaty, almost feverish confidence you just know will eventually crack. And crack it does, when it’s revealed his determination to convict is seated deeply in his own failures as a father—and as a man. His comeuppance is every bit as satisfying as mob boss Johnny Friendly’s at the hands of Marlon Brando’s Terry Malloy. The supporting cast, especially Jack Klugman as a nervous young juror whose background has more in common with the descendant than his fellow jurors, Martin Balsam as the perpetually frustrated foreman, and Warden as a cavalier playboy whose ballgame tickets are burning a whole in his pocket, all are great.
But 12 Angry Men is as much a Henry Fonda film as it is anything. It’s a full decade before his mesmerizing heel turn as the blue-eyed menace of Sergeo Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West and more in the lines of the upstanding stalwarts Fonda played for John Ford: he was, in turn, Abraham Lincoln (in 1938’s Young Mr. Lincoln), Tom Joad (in 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath), and Wyatt Earp (in 1946’s My Darling Clementine), in each role a man of resolute moral character and absolute sincerity. Neither as physically imposing nor as outwardly charismatic as peers like John Wayne or Gary Cooper, Fonda was an everyman who stood up for what was right no matter the consequence, and 12 Angry Men finds him once again in the exact kind of role he’d made compelling for decades.
Would that today there were more like him, men who had the voice to stand up to authoritarianism and fascism. To the wrongs of the Right. To unfettered abuse of the courts and legal systems for perpetual self-enrichment and the demonization of the impoverished and disempowered. To watch 12 Angry Men today is to immerse yourself in a time when faith in America’s legal system might actually matter and would deliver justice, to recall when a lone, strong voice could convince others not by power or threat but by reason. For as much as its narrative of the lone holdout juror may still hold sway today, 12 Angry Men’s belief in a fractured, imperfect justice system is one dependent on men like Fonda’s Juror 8—men or for that matter women who, like those others Fonda played are all too rare today, in fiction and in fact.
Criterion presents 12 Angry Men in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1 in this new 4K restoration in Dolby Vision HDR, created from the original 35mm camera negative, with the monoaural soundtrack remastered from the original 35mm magnetic print. No that anyone complained about the picture quality of the 2011 Blu-ray version, but the new remaster is indeed pristine, with sharp detail, pitch blacks, and superb gradation of grays. That said, it will take a discerning eye and above-grade system to appreciate what is essentially a modest upgrade, and for many viewers the Blu-ray version will, as has for fifteen years, suffice. As per usual, Criterion packages the 4K UHD disc with a second Blu-ray disc that includes both the film and its special features.
Special Features
The Television Version. Written for the series Westinghouse Presents Studio One by Reginald Rose and directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, this 1954 version of 12 Angry Men is introduced in an excellent 15-minute segment featuring by Ron Simon, curator at the Paley Center for Media. It’s a wonderful featurette providing insight into a time when television was quickly becoming omnipresent in American homes—and a site for great drama. Note that no subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing are included for any of the package’s supplements—and that viewers of the Blu-ray disc packaged with the 4K UHD version of the film cannot even toggle subtitles for the main feature, unless they can do so with a remote control: Criterion’s disc menu offers no option for SDH.
12 Angry Men: From TV to the Big Screen. Film Scholar Vance Kepley illustrates the evolution of 12 Angry Men from teleplay to big-screen classic in this 25-minute featurette, supplemented with production stills, film clips, and screenplay excerpts.
Sidney Lumet. In this 22-minute segment, a number of interviews conducted with the director over the course of his career as he reflects upon his start in first television, then film, his success with 12 Angry Men, and his later accomplishments.
Walter Bernstein. Longtime Lumet friend and collaborator Walter Bernstein reminisces about his relationship and work with Lumet in this nine-minute segment.
On Reginald Rose. Ron Simon reflects on the career of 12 Angry Men‘s writer, one of the most renowned figures of television’s Golden Age, in a fifteen-minute segment focusing on the writer’s social and political controversies.
Tragedy in a Temporary Town. Also written by Rose and directed by Lumet, this 1956 teleplay was aired as part of The Alcoa Hour on NBC in 1956.
Excepting the archival content, all of the above-listed featurettes were recorded for The Criterion Collection in 2011 and included on the prior DVD and Blu-ray releases. Also included in the standard double-disc clear jewel case packaging are a trailer for the film and a 24-page color booklet featuring the essay, “Lumet’s Faces,” by writer and law professor Thane Rosenbaum, and Sean Phillips’ lovely watercolor renderings of the film’s cast.
Criterion’s new packaging of 12 Angry Men on 4K UHD disc may feature no new content other than its remastering, but one can hardly complain that its supplements lack thoroughness or engagement. These are as fine a set of ancillaries to complement and contextualize the main feature as any in The Collection. And 12 Angry Men is every bit as fiery and relevant as it had been in 1957. It’s worth owning, whether in this 4K package or Blu-ray, and worth watching every once in a while, just to remind us of what once was and may never be again.
