Kerri Battles the AFI’s Top 100 — #87: 12 Angry Men

 

In the early days of cable television, AMC used to stand for American Movie Classics and they used to air classic American movies around the clock, broken up only by short Masterpiece-Theater-style commentary by the likes of people like James Lipton. Sometime during those days when networks were overtly named based on their content, when I was somewhere around 12 years old, I happened to catch 12 Angry Men from the beginning — also a huge deal in a world without DVR or on-screen guides — and decided to give it a shot. Even then, I was enthralled with the story and blown away by the performances. It was no different this — maybe the 20th — time around.

The film begins with a judge addressing a jury, informing them that they’ve now heard all the testimony regarding the murder case before them. He tells them that, if they should find the defendant guilty, he’ll be sentenced to death by electric chair. He also reminds them that the vote must be unanimous and based on a complete absence of any reasonable doubt. With that, the 12 men file into a sweltering Jury Room with a broken fan. After a short break to relax and use the facilities, the men take a preliminary vote to see where they stand. All but Juror #8, Henry Fonda, vote guilty. The other jurors demand to know how he could possibly vote not guilty in the face of the overwhelming mountain of evidence presented by the prosecution, #8 simply replies, “It’s not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy to die without talking about it first.” The next 90 or so minutes are spent in this room (or the adjacent bathroom) as #8, one by one, convinces the rest of the jurors that maybe, just maybe, the evidence isn’t quite as iron-clad as it seems.

If this premise sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been done a thousand times before. The story of a single juror heroically saving the life of a falsely accused man by swaying hearts and minds is a modern legend in which we’d all like to believe. It’s one of those “the truth always wins and justice is always fair” sorts of stories that people tell in order to soften the blow of, say, finding out the NSA has been tapping everyone’s phone for a decade and selling their collective personal data to the highest bidder. In times like that, you need something to remind you that, hopefully, people aren’t actually all inherently evil and maybe humanity isn’t doomed after all. You know, one of those stories that gives you … whadya call it … hope? Faith? A sense of morals and the importance of an open mind? All of those things that humanity is supposed to possess, but  conveniently seem to completely slip your mind if you have a habit of watching the “it bleeds, it leads” evening news. Even if it’s fiction, it’s the sort of fiction you could easily swallow as fact because you desperately want it to be true. Unless you’re Hitler or Pol Pot or someone. Then maybe you don’t see this as the heartwarming tale of humanity’s potential for greatness that the rest of us do.

It’s not just the story itself that makes this film iconic, though. Of the countless versions that have come before and after it, this interpretation stands alone as the image that pops to the forefront of the collective pop culture hive mind when someone says 12 Angry Men. And that is simply because of the performances themselves.  George C. Scott’s Lee J. Cobb’s powerhouse performance as the anger-fueled lone hold out for guilty, Jack Klugman’s quiet kid from the slums made good, and Piglet’s transformative performance as a meek but intelligent human man would all be reason enough on their own to keep your eyes glued to the screen. Lump them together, though, and add 9 other impeccable performances of vastly different and nuanced characters and you’ve got 96 minutes of footage that deserves acknowledgement, at least. The fact that not a single one of these performances was even nominated for any awards by anyone is mind-boggling because, even creeping up on 60 years later, they’re precisely what allows this film to still hold up. You still want to laugh when a baby-faced Jack Warden cracks an off-color joke.  You feel the patriotism when the European immigrant starts politicking about why the concept of a jury of your peers is so damned important.  You get fired up right along with the the little old man when he wishes aloud that he was still young enough to beat up the ignorant racist to his left. And, of course, you get morally indignant right along with Henry Fonda as he (probably) creates the saintly-tempered architect with a heart of gold trope right before your eyes.

To me, there’s no question why the AFI chose to include this title on their list. It should be noted, though, that the vast majority of tools that Henry Fonda’s #8 uses to sway other jurors to his side aren’t exactly within the bounds of what’s considered legal for a juror. Speculating over whether the testimony could truly be considered accurate is one thing — the bailiff produced that diagram of the old man witness’s apartment quickly enough that it had to have been used somehow in the trial. Wandering the streets at night to perform his own investigation into the facts and purchasing an illegal switchblade in the process? Yeah, these are things that would probably cause a judge to declare a mistrial if he or she were to find out. Really, all Lee J. Cobb would have needed to do would be report Fonda’s actions to the judge and they could have all gotten out of that stifling, sweaty room a lot faster. Of course, that would make it a whole different kind of fable of justice that may not have generated the same long-lasting effects. — KS