The Criterion Collection will be releasing Sidney Lumet’s 12 ANGRY MEN, on DVD and Blu-ray, on November 12th.
12 Angry Men, by Sidney Lumet, may be the most radical big-screen courtroom drama in cinema history. A behind-closed-doors look at the American legal system as riveting as it is spare, the iconic adaptation of Reginald Rose’s teleplay stars Henry Fonda as the initially dissenting member of a jury of white men ready to pass judgment on a Puerto Rican teenager charged with murdering his father. What results is a saga of epic proportions that plays out in real time over ninety minutes in one sweltering room. Lumet’s electrifying snapshot of 1950s America on the verge of change is one of the great feature-film debuts.
Features:
New high-definition digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
Frank Schaffner’s 1955 television version, with an introduction by Ron Simon, director of the Paley Center for Media Studies
“Twelve Angry Men”: From Television to the Big Screen, a video essay by film scholar Vance Kepley comparing the Sidney Lumet and Schaffner versions
Archival interviews with Lumet
New interview about the director with writer Walter Bernstein
New interview with Simon about television writer Reginald Rose
New interview with cinematographer John Bailey in which he discusses cinematographer Boris Kaufman
Tragedy in a Temporary Town (1956), a teleplay directed by Lumet and written by Rose
Original theatrical trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by writer and law professor Thane Rosenbaum
MSRP is $39.95 for Blu-ray and $29.95 for DVD.
