Événement

New Digital Restoration! 12 ANGRY MEN

(1957) dir Sidney Lumet w/Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, Lee J. Cobb, E.G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Jack Warden, Henry Fonda, Joseph Sweeney, Ed Begley, George Voskovec, Robert Webber [96 min; DCP]
12 ANGRY MEN is one of the definitive courtroom dramas and we only ever glimpse the courtroom briefly. Sidney Lumet's sure-handed directorial debut features Henry Fonda as the lone holdout on a jury who have been handed an apparently open-and-shut case. Fonda may be at the center of the film, but Lumet assembles a stellar cast of character actors to make up the rest of the jurors, and the camera angles, lighting, and claustrophobic set boost the tension to the point of bursting out of the frame.

"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. 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. Released when Technicolor and lush production values were common, 12 ANGRY MEN was lean and mean." Roger Ebert