12 Angry Men (DVD)
12 Angry Men, by Sidney Lumet, may be the most radical courtroom drama in cinema history. A behind-closed-doors look at the American legal system that is as riveting as it is spare, this iconic adaptation of Reginald Rose’s teleplay stars Henry Fonda as the dissenting member on a jury of white men ready to pass judgment on a Puerto Rican teenager charged with murdering his father. The result is a saga of epic proportions that plays out over a tense afternoon in one sweltering room. Lumet’s electrifying snapshot of 1950s America on the verge of change is one of the great feature film debuts.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Frank Schaffner’s 1955 teleplay of 12 Angry Men, from the series Studio One, featuring an introduction by Ron Simon, curator at the Paley Center for Media
- Production history of 12 Angry Men, from teleplay to big-screen classic
- Archival interviews with director Sidney Lumet
- New interview with screenwriter Walter Bernstein about Lumet
- New interview with Simon about writer Reginald Rose
- Tragedy in a Temporary Town (1956), a teleplay directed by Lumet and written by Rose
- New interview with cinematographer John Bailey about director of photography Boris Kaufman
- Original theatrical trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by writer and law professor Thane Rosenbaum