10 Deliberate Facts About “12 Angry Men”

Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 10 Deliberate Facts About 12 Angry Men.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. IT’S THE ONLY FILM HENRY FONDA EVER PRODUCED. 
The actor saw the TV production and felt strongly that it would make a great movie. Unable to find any producers willing to take a risk on it (a serious, single-room drama in a time when colorful widescreen epics were in fashion), Fonda teamed up with the writer, Reginald Rose,to produce it themselves. Fonda wound up hating the experience—not the acting side, which he loved (and he was always very proud of the film), but the business side. He hated having to worry about financial and logistical details, and couldn’t stand watching himself in the daily rushes (which producers, but not necessarily actors, are expected to do).

5. IT USES CAMERA TRICKS TO INCREASE THE TENSION.
The problem with making a film set entirely in one room is that it’s bound to get boring, visually speaking (unless it’s a very interesting room, which a jury room is not). Lumet also realized he couldn’t have his characters moving around very much, meaning most of the “action” would involve sitting around a table. So he had the camera move a lot instead. He and his cinematographer, Boris Kaufman (who won an Oscar in 1955 for On the Waterfront), also devised some photographic methods of amplifying the movie’s tone. Lumet wrote: “I shot the first third of the movie above eye level, shot the second third at eye level, and the last third from below eye level. In that way, toward the end, the ceiling began to appear. Not only were the walls closing in, the ceiling was as well. The sense of increasing claustrophobia did a lot to raise the tension of the last part of the movie.”

8. LUMET WAS ONLY THE THIRD PERSON TO GET A BEST DIRECTOR NOMINATION FOR HIS DEBUT FILM.
Orson Welles had been nominated for Citizen Kane, and Delbert Mann had actually won forMarty. About 20 directors have since been Oscar-nominated for their debuts. (Six have won.)