Released in 1957 on the cusp of Hollywood’s new fascination with hard-hitting legal dramas, Sidney Lumet’s “12 Angry Men” was a film seemingly destined to forever tread the tide of cinematic obscurity. While initial reviews had ranged from middling to respectable, desires for commercial appeal had been set adrift by most box office analysts; the endeavor had not been released to the public under any substantial promotional campaign, and studio executives scoffed at the challenge of marketing a picture that featured only one prominent mainstream actor (Henry Fonda) in the middle of an audience boom for epics and star vehicles. That the movie had also been the filmmaking debut of a small and unknown director of teleplays did little to add to their enthusiasm, inevitably casting his work in a shadow of uncertainty. Yet when one takes part in any discussion about the use of the American Justice system in motion pictures today, nearly every reputable source cites it as a watershed moment for the genre, a stubborn relic that refuses to fade from the periphery of vivid moviegoeing experiences. In some way that has less to do with the premise (an important factor all its own) and more to do with how the characters echo the volatile nature of extreme human behaviors in a state of agitation. These are not actors playing up the parts of fictionalized projections; they are embodying the facets of common middle class men of their era, all of whom must burrow their way through the demand of deciding the fate of a human life in a case where evidence may not exactly paint the clearest portrait of guilt.
