Despite premiering nearly 70 years ago, the 1957 film 12 Angry Men is still receiving accolades.<\/p>\n
On April 11, Collider<\/a>released a list of the 20 greatest American films ever made, with 12 Angry Men securing the number one spot. According to the publication, the movie, directed by the late Sidney Lumet, is the very best American-made film because it’s confined, direct, and examines ideas that are still very relevant in the U.S.A.<\/p>\n The list also featured classic films like The Godfather<\/a> Part II from 1974, Do the Right Thing from 1989, 1979’s Apocalypse Now, 1960’s The Apartment, Singin’ in the Rain, released in 1952, Schindler’s List from 1993, and Pulp Fiction from 1994.<\/p>\n Sidney Lumet Shared His Thoughts About the Impact of ’12 Angry Men’<\/p>\n During an interview for AFI’s 10 Top 10<\/a>, Lumet described 12 Angry Men as “the best [movie] in the United States about the jury system.” He then explained that the film focuses on 12 jury members who have made decisions that “are brought about by personal feelings that may or may not have anything to do with the case.”<\/p>\n “In some instances they do and in many instances, they don’t. And as we know the Lee Cobb character, Jury Number Three, is the most wedded to a personal experience which is why he’s the hold out on the other side, as much as [Henry Fonda’s character] is but it’s all in terms of what his personal history and what’s happened between him and his son,” explained the director.<\/p>\n Collider reported that Lumet hadn’t directed a film before he took on 12 Angry Men, written by Reginald Rose. In a 1991 interview with the Television Academy Foundation<\/a>, Lumet, who died in 2011 at the age of 86, explained he had directed television episodes before the production of 12 Angry Men. He shared that directing a television show is quite different than directing a film in terms of storytelling.<\/p>\n “You have to tell a story differently on a 17 inch piece of glass, as opposed to a 40 foot image, they say very different things to an audience with different speed. It becomes much clearer sooner when it’s bigger and you have to adjust your storytelling for that. And it is a tremendously difficult adjustment to make because you’re used to one kind of dramatic emphasis and you suddenly have to retool completely,” said Lumet, who also directed A Dog’s Day Afternoon.<\/p>\n He said, however, that his time working on television was “an enormous help,” as “the laws of optics are constant” when it comes to “the thirty-five millimeter lens” used in both TV and film.<\/p>\n “My knowledge of lenses which is encyclopedic comes from my live television training,” said the director.<\/p>\n This story was originally published by Parade<\/a> on Apr 13, 2026, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite premiering nearly 70 years ago, the 1957 film 12 Angry Men is still receiving accolades. On April…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[196529,196530,196531,156,409,111,139,69,196528],"class_list":{"0":"post-376916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-12-angry-men","9":"tag-american-films","10":"tag-colliderreleased","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-sidney-lumet"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}