12 Angry Men Vs Witness For The Prosecution
This is an essay which compares and contrasts the play "Twelve Angry Men" by Reginald Rose, to the film "Witness for the Prosecution" directed by Billy Wilder.
Both play and film are courtroom dramas, dealing with the central issue justice. Twelve Angry Men is in relation to the American justice system which depicts the values and importance that every juror holds. Witness for the Prosecution is regarding the British justice system which portrays how easily the system can be unstabilized by one person. Both studies are set in the 1950's when where prejudice is very great in America and England. In Twelve Angry Men, prejudice is against a young delinquent whom comes from a poor background and lives in a "filthy neighbourhood and a broken home". In Witness for the Prosecution, Christine Vole is the subject of prejudice in the court of law as she is a German whom the English hate, as this film is set after WWII.
Twelve Angry Men is a play which revolves around the jury of a murder case, where a young man is on trial for his father's murder. All, but one of the jurors declare there is no reasonable doubt, but one of them, while far from convinced of the boy's innocence, feels that some of the evidence against him has been uncertain. By the end of that long, hot afternoon the juror has ingeniously reversed the opinion.
The central issue of the play is justice and the importance of the jury system in the administration of justice. The play makes the argument that the jury system is vital to the functioning of American justice even it is flawed because despite the personal prejudices of the jurors they are in the end willing to weigh the arguments about reasonable doubt in the way that juror 8 advises and therefore the play is optimistic about human nature and the American justice system.
The play is set in New York in 1957. The stage is bare in the beginning and the judge's voice gives instructions as to what their...
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