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The object of the sentence is to communicate. Thus you want to eliminate ambiguity.
So if you begin with this sentence: "Jim was in a room with four other men," then the two sentences are clearly different.
But if you begin with "Five men were in a room," then the two sentences may be synonymous. But, frankly, "Every man placed a screen in front of him" seems awkward. If the verb is intended to be reflexive, then use a reflexive pronoun. Other languages are stricter about this.
A German politely offering a seat to another would say, "Setze Sich, bitte." (Seat yourself, please.)
Grammatically yours,
"Dr. Fred" Bortz, author of science books for young readers
and
Science book reviewer