The Red Balloon and 12 Angry Men

Roger Ebert said in his review, “. In the jury room, some jurors make veiled references to "these people." Finally Juror No. 10 (Ed Begley) begins a racist rant ("You know how these people lie. It's born in them. They don't know what the truth is. And let me tell you, they don't need any real big reason to kill someone, either...").” This excerpt from Ebert’s review could show us how people from America during the 1950’s thought about foreigners especially ones from Germany and Japan. This feeling might lead to errors because many people had thoughts in their heads about the subject and not open to logic and reason. Even in the beginning of the movie juror 8 might have thought the defendant was, but gives the defendant a fighting chance by fighting for him and eventually finds him not guilty.

How do 12 Angry Men and The Red Balloon change how the institutions make films? First let’s starts with The Red Balloon. This movie is entirely shot on a real location. The majority of movies made during the 1950’s were made on man-made sets. By shooting the film on real location it gives the movie a sense of realism. The 12 Angry men did this by shooting the movie as if it was done in real time and by using camera angles to help portray certain events. First, by giving us a movie as if it is really happening in real time make us believe the movie is realistic. I do believe the jurors get into the debate room around five and leave around 7, which is around two hours to be shown in about an hour and a half. To also show us this, the director gives people time sensitive things they want do. The main one is juror 7 who has tickets to a ball game that night and he wants to go and makes his decisions based on this. The second is camera angles. Lumet explains this in Ebert’s review, “"I shot the first third of the movie above eye level, shot the second third at eye level and the last third from below eye level. In that way, toward the end the ceiling began to appear. Not only were the walls closing in, the ceiling was as well. The sense of increasing claustrophobia did a lot to raise the tension of the last part of the movie." In the film's last shot, he observes, he used a wide-angle lens "to let us finally breathe.".” By using different camera angles the director can help the audience feel certain things or help explain things. All three of these are still widely used when making films today.