Twelve Angry Men
1957
(Story and screenplay by Reginald Rose. Film directed by Sydney Lumet)
From the reference to the Woolworth building that the
jurors may see from the window, we may
infer that the action is set in New York.
This building, which is located in lower Manhattan not
far from the N.Y. Supreme Court, was built for M. Woolworth who ran a firm of
department stores selling cheap items in 1913. The president at the time was
Woodrow Wilson (Democratic president 1912-1920). He inaugurated the building
from Washington D. C., by pressing a button that lit up the 80.000 bulbs of the
building.
Vocabulary:
To be at somebody’s beck and call
To
give $5 to the cause (aux bonnes oeuvres)
I. The tension
At first, the tone of the conversations is congenial. But the situation deteriorates (goes downhill) fairly rapidly. To
convey a sense of tension, Lumet draws a parallel between the storm which is brewing outside
and the stifling atmosphere in the
room.
When the jurors enter the jury room, they observe that
it is the hottest day of the year. It is sizzling hot / baking hot / stifling hot/ roasting. On top of this, the windows open with difficulty and
the fan is on
the blink (it has broken down). Finally,
they are locked into the room.
Driving rain / to be raining cats and dogs /
a downpour
A lightning bolt / A flash of lightning / A
roll of thunder
(/ The weather is muggy,
and makes the jurors feel hot and clammy)
The bigot (the man who suffers from hay fever which makes him impatient and
irritable) cracks a joke. He makes
fun of / makes sport of the foreman’s
suggestion that the jurors should take
a preliminary vote by ballot.
He is eager to
leave the room quickly / to get it
over with as soon as possible. (He wishes he could go home. He would like
to go home.)
Wish + Present Conditional: Wish on present or future
Wish + Preterit: Wish on present or future but
impossible to fulfil.
Wish + Past Perfect: Regret
The juror with the hat is of the same opinion, as he is
attending a baseball game that evening.
The tension cranks up a notch:
-
When Fonda refuses to raise his hand and suggests
spending an hour to discuss the case before “sending the kid to the chair”. The
bigot who is a great element of tension chuckles and mutters under his breath: “boy oh boy there’s
always one”.
-
When Fonda suggests they should sit for an hour, the “bigot”
pretends to tell a funny joke totally unrelated to the case, thereby implying
Fonda’s suggestion is preposterous and a waste of time.
-
When the “bigot”, (who constantly upsets the rules of
the discussion), launches into a racist diatribe it irritates the old man
causing him to stand up and protest.
-
When Fonda asks “the bigot” why he believes the
woman’s testimony whereas he doesn’t believe the kid as “she is one of them too”.
-
When the “bigot” calls the foreman a “kid” whereas the latter is only trying to keep
things organised, causing the Foreman to grow weary and lose his temper.
The tension reaches its climax when H. Fonda pulls out the very same switchblade knife / flick-knife (…)
(The “gentleman is entitled to see exhibits in evidence”)
II. The case
The defendant is a
young offender who has just turned 18 years old and who allegedly stabbed his father to
death.
He is said to have stabbed his father. He
is accused of having killed his
father.
He grew up in a slum. He comes from an under-privileged background (/ neighbourhood).
His mother is not mentioned and he was raised by his
father who is a drunkard (an alcoholic), who was convicted for forgery and who used to beat him up. He is a repeat offender (/a
“jailbird”). He is a petty criminal. We can infer
from the context that the building where the killing took place is
probably a “tenement”.
To mug
someone: to assault for money.
Two eyewitnesses claim they saw the kid stab his
father and runaway from the apartment.
One is a woman who lives in a building opposite the
building where the killing took place, across the elevated train.
The other witness is an old man who lives in the same
building, in an apartment just one storey below.
These two people bore witness / gave evidence / gave testimony / testified in
court.
(To bear witness)
The accused however claims he was at the cinema at the
time of the killing.
(To claim ≠ to pretend)
It appears that during the trial, the prosecution
relied heavily on these 2 witnesses.
The accused was defended by a public defender. Henry Fonda
questions the competence of this attorney. Maybe the public defender believed
the kid didn’t stand a chance. Fonda blames him for not having cross-examined the witnesses. Had
he been in the place of the accused / If he had been in the place of
the accused, he would have asked for another lawyer.
(To blame someone for doing
something / for not doing something).
III. Arguments of the Jurors (Never
in the movie are the names of the jurors mentioned.
(We’ll only know the names of the old man and of Henry
Fonda’s character at the very end of the film. Naturally, this intends to throw
light on the fact that jurors are anonymous.)
Juror n°2: “The little man
with the glasses sitting on the left of the Foreman”
His argument is that the defence did not prove that
the boy was innocent. However, as Henry Fonda’s character points out, the burden of proof
is on the prosecution. It is up to the
prosecution to prove that the defendant is guilty.
Juror n°3: “The loud man at
the head of the “beck and call” company who tells the story of his son.
When this juror presents his argument, he asserts that
he is only concerned with facts. However as he digresses to tell the
story of his own personal fight with his son, one can’t help but feel that
somehow the man identifies himself with
the victim. He sympathises with the victim (/ he
feels sympathetic to the victim).
In reality, he has
a personal issue which prevents him from being objective.
Juror n°4: “The Broker”
This juror appears as extremely rational and tempered.
His is a very analytical mind. For him the boy his guilty and he explains the
guilt of the accused by the environment in which the boy grew up (“slums are
breeding grounds for criminals”).
Besides, he is very suspicious
of the boy’s alibi. He considers the boy’s alibi is ‘flimsy’.
Indeed nobody saw the defendant at the cinema and he cannot remember the title
of the film he is supposed to have watched.
He does not set / put great store by the
defendant’s arguments. (To set great store by something)
He focuses on the weapon the kid is supposed to have
used as well, trying to prove that his knife was a very unusual knife.
Juror n°5: “The man from the Slum”
At first, this juror decides not to justify his
choice. We note that when the jurors took the customary preliminary vote, he
hesitated to raise his hand, as if not quite certain of boy’s guilt, but
influenced by the other jurors around him.
Juror n°6: “The painter”
This juror is not concerned with the fact that the
defendant was unable to prove his innocence, nor does he try to explain the
boy’s criminal mind by the environment in which he grew up. On the contrary, he
is mainly concerned with the motive of the accused. For him, the fact that the boy had
been beaten up repeatedly by his father prompted him to retaliate and stab him
to death. As the broker says, everybody has a breaking point and the two slaps
in the face may have been “two too many”. Contrary to the broker, the painter
grants a lot of importance to the fact that the kid said he had been punched in
the face and not slapped in the face.
Juror n°7: “The baseball man”
He is eager to go to the stadium to see a baseball
game. He believed the boy was guilty right from the start. He focuses on the
past of the accused, on his personal record. The assaults he had committed
previously some of which involved the use of a knife: “Oh, he is really handy
with a knife”.
He’s still convinced of his guilt and asserts that
discussing the case for a hundred years would not make him change his mind.
Juror n°8: Henry Fonda’s
character who voted Not-Guilty
He is the only one to have doubts as to the guilt of
the accused. He challenges all the other jurors’ arguments. He says the
defendant does not have to prove his innocence. He is not convinced by the
prosecution’s arguments. He believes the prosecution does not have a strong
case as it relies only on the two testimonies of the witnesses and that even if
the witnesses were under oath, they’re only humans and as such are liable to make
mistakes. He also proves for instance that the kid’s knife is not as unusual as
the prosecution or the broker claim.
Juror n°9: The old man
He does not get a chance to talk but he disagrees with
the bigot’s arguments right from the start.
Juror n°10: A watchmaker (who
is not a native speaker)
He is one of the jurors who are not given the
opportunity to talk. However, as an immigrant, we understand that he is not
receptive to the arguments of the bigot / he does not see the bigot’s arguments
in a favourable light.
He sides with the man
who grew up in a slum when the latter snaps at the insulting bigot.
Juror n°11: The bigot who is
also a bully
He keeps interrupting the other jurors and breaking
the rules that have been fixed by the foreman. He is
cranky and cynical. He is a bully as he
keeps interrupting everyone else in the room. He relies on the testimony of the
witness who lives in the apartment across the street. But his arguments against
the defendant are mainly motivated by pure racism and xenophobia.
To be
prejudiced against someone
Juror n°12: The advertising
man
He is nice, pleasant and accommodating and tries to
appease the tension between the jurors. But he is also a little shallow (i.e.
superficial). He trusts the testimonies of the two witnesses as “these people were
under oath”, even though he concedes that a trial ‘is not an exact science’.
Juror n°1: The Foreman
Does not present any argument.
IV. Inconsistencies
The juries are supposed to represent a cross-section of
society. However we note that jurors in the film are exclusively
white men (and as such do not represent minorities such as women for example).
Even in the 1950s this would have been unusual.
