12 Angry Men

12 Angry Men

  • Submitted By: Focketeer
  • Date Submitted: 11/10/2013 11:55 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 903
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 1

In the film ‘Twelve Angry Men’ the director William Friedkin uses dialogue, body language, camerawork and colour techniques in many significant scenes to convey the idea that everyone has their own prejudices and that the juror’s emotional baggage influences their decisions to judge. One of the major scenes in the film is the one in the bathroom with jurors 6, 7 and 8.

Dialogue is used to show the characters perspectives of justice. In the bathroom scene, dialogue has an important role as it shows how the characters feel about having to wait and their idea of justice and reasonable doubt. At the start of the scene, the 7th juror walks into the bathroom and later asks the 8th juror “What are you getting out of this, kicks? The boy is guilty pal. So let’s go home before we all get sore throats.” This is a good example of how the 8th juror is being alienated and how ignorant the 7th juror is who has a baseball game that’s more important than the boys life. When the 6th juror walks in he talks about the other jurors then asks “You think we’ll be here much longer?” and “You think he’s innocent?” and the 8th juror answers the same answer for both questions “I don’t know” This helps the audience understand that it’s not proven yet that the boy is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Another example of this is the repetition of the word “suppose” that the 8th juror says often throughout the film, the other jurors often question it and don’t understand that the case isn’t about whether the boy is guilty or not, but whether there is a reasonable doubt.

Colour is a significant technique used throughout the whole film to help the audience understand who each juror is and where they stand. One of the main ideas of this is the colour of clothing that the jurors wear and how it contrasts with the background. Juror 8 has grey clothing that almost matches the colour of the wall in the jury room and the bathroom, this makes him almost blend in the background in comparison to the...

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