The Architecture Of the Human Face

Rating: 10/10 (18 December 2002)

I love this film, and watch it whenever it's on. It was adapted from a television play by Reginald Rose, and directed by Sidney Lumet. A deceptively simple story of twelve jurors who must decide the fate of a very young man who may or may not have killed his father. These men are a cross-section of American and in particular New York society, circa 1957, and range from the working to the upper middle classes; from the highly sensitive to the appallingly crude; and from those who think they're smart and perceptive and often are not, to those who think little of themselves and who really ought to rate themselves more highly. The play is so intensely written, and Rose had such an excellent ear for dialogue, that one often finds oneself caring more for the jurors than for the outcome of the case they're deliberating.
At the start of the film, there is one holdout for not guilty against the eleven who believe, with varying degrees of sincerity and seriousness, in the guilt of defendant. It's the job of the lone juror to convince the rest of the logic of his position, which is one of reasonable doubt. It's here that Mr. Rose, or rather his lead character, plays fast and loose with the rules of evidence, as has been pointed out over the years; and while I'm generally a stickler for rules when it comes to matters that plays and movies are often reckless with, especially where medicine and science are concerned, I make an exception in this case due to the excellence of the writing, and of the movie as a whole.
If ever there was an actor's film, it's this one. Every actor gives a superb performance. Some characters are better conceived than others, and thus John Fiedler, as the milquetoast of the bunch, and Ed Binns as the working man, are at somewhat of a disadvantage, no fault of the actor. Ed Begley's character, a bigot, starts out interestingly, then descends into somewhat of a cliche, which is too bad in way, since Begley was at the top of his game at this stage of his career. Martin Balsam's sighing self-pity is put to excellent use in his performance of a man who likes to coach football. George Voskovec is magnificent as a foreign-born watchmaker who challenges Jack Warden's loudmouth salesman. I've never seen Warden better than he is here. His character is a jerk and a joker, borderline Runyon, or rather the way Runyon types often are in real life: insufferable. Warden plays for effect rather than charm, and has a way of making other performers look good in their reactions to him, which tend to be unfavorable. E.G. Marshall is imposing as the icily superior stockbroker, oozing contempt for others while maintaining a facade of fairness. Not a bad man, just a snob, of the sort one encounters often in the real world, seldom in the movies. Lee J. Cobb is the juror with a deep personal involvement in the case, and becomes in time the nearest to a true villain (albeit a pathetic one) of the piece; while Henry Fonda's dissenter more or less wears the white hat. Cobb gives the sort of highly charged, emotional performance he gave in On the Waterfront, a bit quieter here, and not so malevolent. He was brilliant at conveying the demons of men who don't know they have demons. Fonda manages to be saintly with becoming sanctimonious. His character has the thankless job that liberals often take on, which is that of defender of the damned. One senses at times that the man would rather be elsewhere, that he's a tad too retiring for the this sort of thing.
What I remember most fondly about the movie is its exploration of the architecture of the human face, often in close-up or medium shot. We see old faces and youngish ones, the craggy and the smooth, the granite-jawed and the slack-jawed. There are anxious faces with eagle eyes and lazy ones with drowsy eyes. Some faces smile automatically, others benignly, some not at all. With so much emphasis nowadays on action pictures, it would be good for young directors to study 12 Angry Men, to see just how much action there is in the human face. I'll take this one over Pearl Harbor any old day.