What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1957

The Year: 1957

What the Nominees Were: The Bridge on the River Kwai, Peyton Place, Sayanora, 12 Angry Men, Witness for the Prosecution
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: In America, we had Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd, Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, and Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success. Ingmar Bergman in Sweden produced not one but two masterpieces, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.

What Did Win: The Bridge on the River Kwai

How It’s Aged: It’s a great film. The look on Alec Guinness’s face at the end when he realizes what he’s done is one of the great moments in cinema.

What Should’ve Won: 12 Angry Men
How Hard Was the Decision: Very hard. It was a shame to take away The Bridge on the River Kwai’s deserving win, and if I had to give it away, it was tempting to give it to A Face in the Crowd or Paths of Glory, but ultimately 12 Angry Men is just too good to pass up.

Director: Sidney Lumet
Writer: Reginald Rose, based on his teleplay of the same name
Stars: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E. G. Marshall, Jack Warden

The Story: One holdout juror has to convince the other eleven to acquit a young Latino man accused of murder.

Any Nominations or Wins: It was nominated for Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay, but won nothing
Why It Didn’t Win: Oscar loves war epics, and The Bridge on the River Kwai delivered admirably. The Academy’s nominations acknowledged the value of this picture, which is remarkable, because it was a remake of TV by a first-time director, but ultimately awarded it nothing, which isn’t surprising. Marty was also a TV remake, but it was the exception that proved the rule (in a weak year.)

Why It Should Have Won:

1. Every time I finish any movie on Amazon Prime, it recommends movies I may want to see next, which will include various thematically similar movies …and Twelve Angry Men. Because they know that everybody loves this movie. Reddit is full of testimonials from young viewers who have never liked a black and white movie before seeing this one (I should point out that Reddit has a particular fondness for all-male movies). This movie’s estimation has risen and risen in my lifetime, to the extent that it now threatens to rival Citizen Kane on lists of great directorial debuts. Why is this movie so universally popular? Why are people who are allergic to black and white movies so scintillated by 12 men having a 90 minute conversation in a sealed room? Because this is a master class in basic cinema techniques: the framing, the cutting, the (limited) camera movement. If you want to skip film school, just make a shot list of this movie.  One of his trips: isolate, isolate, isolate.  All 12 men are in the room at all times, but Lumet isolates pairs of them and creates mini-dramas with great skill.  
   
2. This movie is the ultimate example of my advice that effective heroes do it all with tricks and traps, rather than righteous forthrightness. Fonda has gone out the night before and found a similar knife to the murder weapon on the street. But he doesn’t show anybody right away. He waits until one of his fellow jurors waves the supposedly-unique murder weapon in his face. Then, boom, halfway through the movie, Fonda sticks his knife in the table. He was willing to sit there with that knife burning a hole in this pocket all that time, because he knew the value of traps.
   
3. Those of you who know me, or even those who have just gotten to know me through this series, are aware that I’m a wee bit to the left in my politics. So surely I should love this movie’s message, which is basically a beginner’s primer on liberalism in all its aspects. But here’s the thing: I’ve never left this movie sure I would acquit, even after seeing all this drama. I worry, when I see this movie, that a murderer is going free and might kill again. I know that I should acquit, because clearly there is some shred of reasonable doubt, but I’m not sure what I would actually do, especially if there had been no Fonda in the room. And that’s the secret of the movie’s greatness. It’s not a “well, duh” movie. It’s a movie about winning people over to liberalism for its own sake, even if, in this case, it may be the right idea at the wrong time.
   
4. Rose eventually turned his teleplay and screenplay into a stage play, but he changed the name to “12 Angry Jurors,” so that it could be staged gender blind. I would love to see the same script with an all or partially female cast, which I think would work just fine. My daughter is a theater star at her high school and I know she’d kill in this.
5. It’s interesting that the title is not 11 Angry Men. Fonda’s holdout juror never seems angry like many of the others, but there’s clearly a fire in his belly. He feels an injustice is being done and must be stopped, and he’s determined to use cool, calm reason to solve the problem, but something else is threatening to erupt beneath his performance.
   

Ah, 1957: Because heaven forbid any food not be a diet food (And for what it’s worth, I’d rather hang out eating cookies with Shirley Simkin any day.)