The Criterion Collection

After years of working in theater, director Sidney Lumet insisted on multiweek rehearsals before shooting began on 12 Angry Men, his first film.

Lumet’s first break as a director came from Yul Brynner. He was serving as assistant director to Brynner on the television series Danger, and when Brynner left to take a chance on a gig called The King and I, Lumet stepped into his shoes.

Lumet was well known for bringing in his films under budget. He saved $50,000 on 12 Angry Men, which came in at around $350,000.

Before coming to Hollywood, 12 Angry Men’s director of photography, Boris Kaufman, shot such groundbreaking French films as Jean Vigo’s À propos de Nice, Zéro de conduite, and L’Atalante.

Kaufman’s brother was the filmmaking pioneer Denis Kaufman (a.k.a. Dziga Vertov), director of the legendary Man with a Movie Camera.

12 Angry Men is the first and only film Henry Fonda produced, and he’s said to have cited it as one of his proudest achievements.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has said that 12 Angry Men made her want to pursue a career in law.

Lumet ended screenwriter Walter Bernstein’s tenure on the blacklist by asking him to work on That Kind of Woman (1959) under his own name.

Two actors in the film version of 12 Angry Men, Joseph Sweeney (Juror 9) and George Voskovec (Juror 11), also starred in the original television production, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (who went on to direct Planet of the Apes and Patton).

The ending of Schaffner’s television version is much more ambiguous than that of Lumet’s film version. There is no clear indication in it that Juror 3 has changed his vote, and he even points a knife in the direction of Fonda’s Juror 8. But as you can see from the script for the TV version, a final shot was planned but never filmed, one that would have made the outcome more definitive.

Kim Hendrickson is an executive producer at the Criterion Collection.