Category: Culture

It started as a tv play from American tv in the early 1950s, and has been re-made many times and is a favourite for theatre groups even now, but the film version of “12 Angry Men” from 1957 is still the best.

The film was directed by Sidney Lumet and has a very strong all-male cast, including Lee J Cobb and Henry Fonda.

The plot is very simple: a group of jurors consider the case of a young boy accused of stabbing his father to death. They weigh the evidence and decide a verdict.

Nothing much happens other than in the jury room, and the sense of heat and claustrophobia is very strong.

You can understand why it is a theatre favourite. Apart from a simple set with a big table, it’s just talking.

So much has been written about this film and its hidden meanings, but you can make of it what you will. Some of the arguments presented are apparently not correct, and there is a point where something happens that in reality would cause a mis-trial, but don’t worry about that.

I recently found it on bluray, and suggest you track down this version.

The 1950s was a golden age for science fiction, good and bad.

Here are three goodies:

“The Thing From Another World” aka “The Thing”.

A group of scientists find an alien frozen in the ice at the North Pole. (1951) Don’t go for the re-make.

“The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers”

Mysterious pods appear from space and grow duplicate humans. (1956) Don’t go for the re-make.

“Forbidden Planet”

A group of astronauts visit the planet Altair IV to find out what has happened to the previous expedition to the planet. (1956)

This is a curiously sterile film, but looks great on the big screen.

I am not quite sure of the first film I ever saw at the cinema. I remember going to see my mum’s friend Auntie Grace and her mother giving me some money to see a film.

It could have been “The Sword In The Stone” but my memory is that it was “Trouble In Store”. This was released in 1953, before I was born, so, if it was that, it was a re-release.

It’s very hard to explain to people just how hugely popular Norman Wisdom was in those days, but he was massive and all his films were huge hits. They broke attendance records.

Perhaps his best known film is “The Early Bird”, where he played a milkman at a local delivery being oppressed by big business.

It was often the same with Norman, the little man against the world.

There always seemed to be some kind of love interest, Norman plays “Norman”, Edward Chapman is Mr Grimsdale, and Norman sings.

“Trouble In Store” was Norman Wisdom’s first full length film. Watching it now, and it does crop up on the old film channels, it’s not as squirmy as some of his later efforts.

By the mid-1960s, Norman Wisdom’s films looked dated, even for then, and he had moved on to do more serious work, then tv. But for a good fifteen years Norman Wisdom was top of the tree in the UK.