The public, however, dismissed the film, but its reputation grew by leaps and bounds over the years. Lucky for us, Sidney Lumet, directing his first feature film, sank his teeth into the project, crafting a riveting atmosphere of entrapment, claustrophobia, and moral conflict, and with a first-rate cast headlined by Henry Fonda and taut script by Reginald Rose, 12 Angry Men wowed the critics. So it was quite a risky venture for United Artists to go (way) against the grain and bank on a small yet intense drama that took place not just in a single location, but almost entirely in a single room!ฤก2 Angry Men, like the Oscar-winning Marty before it, was first an acclaimed one-hour television program, but while it was relatively easy to "open up" Marty for the screen, the premise of 12 Angry Men, which chronicles the heated deliberations of a fractured jury on a capital murder case, required it to remain anchored in the confines of a stark, utilitarian meeting room. "Bigger is better" was the prevailing philosophy and it sparked the production of sprawling epics and splashy musicals that could give viewers a brand of entertainment TV couldn't. Back in the mid-1950s when television began to captivate the American public and erode box office returns, movie studios scrambled to find ways to entice audiences back into theaters.
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