Recently came this look back at the motion picture 12 Angry Men examining the deceptive nature of its political outlook. 12 Angry Men is one of the iconic films of Hollywood more because of its leftism - albiet rather subtle leftism - than because of its cinematic quality. It's also been a staple of high school required reading - yours truly had the fortune of reading Henry Fonda's character in 10th grade English class way back a quarter-century ago.
Now 12 Angry Men may be revered for its ideological hue placed on the murder trial of an 18-year-old boy - whose racial makeup is left unstated but which is presumably either black or latino, hence the film's outlook - and the titular jury's deliberation on a hot New York day, but it's still a superior presentation, featuring one of the best ensemble casts of its time or any other. Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb are the primary combatants, but they are backed by a dazzling supporting cast that includes Jack Klugman, E.G. Marshall, John Fiedler, Edward Binns, Jack Warden, Robert Webber, Ed Begley, and Martin Balsam. It's ironic that quite a few of these performers had notable guest roles in The Fugitive with David Janssen, Barry Morse, and Bill Raisch - another iconic statement about the folly of the death penalty when the innocent are the target, and another filmed presentation whose superior quality overcomes ideological objection to its view of the world.
12 Angry Men was one of many films directed by Sidney Lumet, and it's no accident that it is one of his three best films. It has in common with the other two that they have strong and disagreeable ideological viewpoints as well as brilliant execution in script and by the cast, production, and director.
Fail-Safe is the second of Lumet's best films. Based on Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's 1962 novel, it was produced by Columbia Pictures at the same time they were backing Stanley Kubrick's epic black comedy Dr. Strangelove. Kubrick used his influence to get his film released first, and as a result Fail-Safe got lost in the shuffle.
This is too bad, because in some ways Lumet's film is the better of the two. While nothing tops Peter Sellers' spectacular triple role of the titular Strangelove, RAF officer Lionel Mandrake, and the US President (it's always fascinating hearing British actors like Sellers, Barry Morse, and Jane Seymour speaking in American accents, as the best of them often speak the accent better than some American actors - heck, Seymour and Morse made a superb career out of it), Fail-Safe crackles with superb performances from Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, Fritz Weaver, Edward Binns, Henry Fonda, Larry Hagman, and a short but brilliant dramatic turn by comedian Dom Deluise. As in 12 Angry Men Lumet uses claustrophobia to excellent effect, trapping the audience in the bowels of Strategic Air Command HQ, the Pentagon, the cockpit of a supersonic nuclear bomber, and the President's underground nuclear command chamber. By no means is the film a realistic portrayal of such facilities in reallife - the "Hot Line" in the film is a bulky telephone with headphones for use by translators, where in reallife the Hot Line was a teletype communicator - but they succeed in terms of dramatic pull nonetheless.
The story revolves around a bomber squadron led by Colonel Jack Grady (Binns). A failure of a fault indicator at SAC HQ leads to routine replacement of the part in question; when the bulky part is replaced, the SAC computer system reboots, but in so doing it activates the strategic attack code box aboard Jack Grady's warplane, and by a fatal confluence the Russians begin jamming the squadron's radios so they can't contact home; forced to proceed on the assumption that nuclear war has broken out, Grady's squadron proceeds toward its target - Moscow. It is from here that the story revs up as SAC and the President work to stop the bombers, but are frustrated by the skill and working orders of the squadron pilots as well as the power of their planes.
The story's ideological flaw stems from its portrayal of General Warren Black (O'Herlihy) and political scientist Walter Groteschele (Matthau). Groteschele has some audacious ideas about nuclear warfare, some of which come out in a dinner discussion with a local writer named Foster (Dana Elcar of MacGyver fame) where Foster loudly objects to Groteschele's notion that a nuclear war does not necessarily have to escalate to the point of the complete annihilation of the world. The notion that use of nuclear weapons would ipso facto escalate to armageddon has always been the bumper-sticker boilerplate of liberalism's view of such devices - never mind that at the end there is indeed an exchange of nuclear blows, which does not escalate. The audience is supposed to side with Foster and later Warren Black in disputes with Groteschele, especially when Groteschele argues that Soviet Russia will surrender to the US as the squadron penetrates Soviet airspace, an idea too absurd to be believed by any serious individual and which as a result hurts the story's dramatic pull. Yet even here irony creeps in, for Groteschele's argument winds up being partially vindicated as the Russians prove even more afraid of war than the US.
Warren Black is supposed to have the decisive line when he tells Groteschele, "You remember (Nazi tyranny) so well that you're no different from what you want to kill." Never mind that Groteschele's larger point - that Soviet Russia was the enemy of the West that had launched Cold War upon the West - was accurate; never mind also that the Russians escalated a comparatively simple attack code snafu into outright crisis by refusing to let the US contact their planes - and also lie about it to the President.
Letting ideology trump common sense continues as throughout the varied negotiations with the Russians - first between the President and the Red Chairman via the Hot Line, later between SAC General Frank Bogan (Overton) and his Soviet counterpart via an identical communication system - an absurd moral equivalence permeates things - "You have the same equipment we do, what did it tell you?" the President pointedly asks at one point; "We have computers, like yours," the Red Chairman states later; "We got a taste of the future, do we learn from it or go on the way we have?" the President angrilly asks at the end.
The absurdity of the confluence of events in the film is why the US Air Force asked for the disclaimer at the film's end, and the disclaimer was correct in being added.
Yet for all that the film is outstanding storytelling, from Lumet's claustrophobic direction through the excellence of the entire cast - when a Technical Sergeant (Deluise) must reveal to the Russians how to detonate nuclear-tipped air to air missiles, the performance is made so well that it leaves the audience shaken watching the man limp back to his desk at SAC HQ, head bowed in shame. The film works so well that even the preposterous ending - SPOILER WARNING - the President vows to the Russians that if Moscow is destroyed he will sacrifice New York City to appease the Russians, and carries out this promise by ordering Warren Black to launch two 20-megaton bombs onto the Big Apple using the Empire State Building for Ground Zero - works.
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The other of Lumet's three best films is Network. A rambling attack both on the power of television and also of large corporations, the film revolves around the fictional UBS TV network and its star newscaster Howard Beale (Peter Finch, who passed away after completing work on the film Raid On Entebbe and received a posthumous Oscar for Network). Beale is fired and goes on-air to announce that he will kill himself. He requests permission to issue an on-air apology, but is becoming insane. UBS is owned by a company called CCA, and its hatchet man is Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall, who seemingly can never fail with any role he gets), who despises UBS' news division chief Max Schumacher (William Holden) and the annual deficits his division runs. At a stockholders' meeting Hackett stabs Schumacher in the back by announcing a network reorganization that takes away his power; Max retaliates by letting Howard Beale go on-air and make a vulgar rambling commentary about life.
Schumacher is fired by network cheif Edward George Ruddy (William Smith, perhaps better known from the 1977 Clint Eastwood film The Gauntlet) but rehired when ratings for UBS' newscasts explode whenever Howard Beale is on. Max sees Beale becoming more and more insane and is livid because Frank Hackett and programming chief Diana Christenson (Faye Dunawaye in one of the few roles of her career that actually accomplishes something) want to exploit him for the network's ratings.
Hackett fires Schumacher once and for all just before Beale sneaks onto the news set and delivers his most insane speech yet, urging the audience to start yelling "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" He thus gets his own talk-show-style series that brings in enormous ratings, but his downfall begins when he reveals that a Saudi front company has purchased CCA and demands viewers lobby the government to stop the deal. To the horror of everyone except Christenson, Beale's speech leads to an avalanche of telegrams to Washington DC demanding the deal be stopped, even though the Saudi front company literally controls the network.
CCA chief Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) then gives a growling pep talk to Howard Beale explaining the reality that dollars control things, so Beale does a spectacular about-face and devotes his speeches to pessimistic takes on life and the powerlessness of people. UBS thus begins to collapse, and the only way out is for Christenson to hire out a gang of terrorists who've been a pet project of hers - this leads to the film's funniest scene when the terrorists fight bitterly over royalties from their proposed TV deal, with one of their own calling them out about acting like those despised capitalists - to gun down Beale on his TV show.
The rambling nature of the film's message stems in part from the fact that the script is a black-humor satire by noted playwright Paddy Chayevsky. This rambling nature makes it difficult for the audience to really catch what the message is - are we supposed to hate TV for being TV, or for letting corporations control things? That corporations do not wield the clout the film implies comes through every day by the often reprehensible treatment they get from government, the MSM, and so forth - when was the last time a film or TV show ever stood up for corporations and against their critics? Even so, Lumet steers a brilliant story forward into a crackling good film.
This really conveys how good a director Sidney Lumet was. Almost regardless of how absurd the story's point of view can be, Lumet tells it and makes the audience enjoy it.
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