To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) - film review

Atticus Finch is a widowed lawyer living in the small town of Macomb, Alabama, with his two children, ten-year-old Jem and six-year-old Scout.   It is 1932 and times are hard for everyone.  The outward calm of the community cannot conceal the mutual mistrust that exists between the white and black residents.  Jem and Scout’s imaginary fears, over a madman who is locked up in one of the neighbouring houses, are supplanted by genuine anxieties when Atticus opts to defend a black farmhand, Tom Robinson, in an impending trial.  Atticus is so convinced of Tom’s innocence that he risks his reputation and the safety of his family to defend the black man, who is charged with the rape of a white girl.  Unfortunately, his white neighbours consider this a betrayal and are more than ready to take matters into their own hands...

A stunning adaptation of an essential piece of American literature.  Closely adapted from Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird is cinema’s most potent and eloquent statement on the race issue, made at a time when racial tensions in the United States were approaching a crisis point.  The film is not only a vivid account of the racial divide that existed in the Deep South during the Great Depression; it also evokes the fears and prejudices that continued to divide blacks and whites in America in the early 1960s.  Crafted with intelligence and a rare lyrical realism, this is one of the most humane and socially significant pieces of cinema to have come out of an American film studio.

To Kill a Mockingbird was not only a critical and commericial success, it also helped the cause of the African-American Civil Rights Movement in breaking down the physical and invisible barriers which separated black and white communities in America in the 1960s.  It would perhaps be stretching it to say this was the film that would ultimately give the United States its first black president, but it certainly made a contribution, helping to unite a divided nation in a period of immense social and political upheaval.

Gregory Peck’s portrayal of the colour-blind lawyer Atticus Finch epitomises the new America which the supporters of the Civil Rights Movement wanted to see – not just racially tolerant but driven with an almost religious zeal to take a stand against racially motivated injustice.  This is Peck’s finest hour, his moving performance a fitting tribute to those who fought, and died, in the interests of racial equality.  Peck’s memorable turn is complemented by the contributions from his supporting cast, particularly the child actors Mary Badham, Phillip Alford and John Megna, who give the film both its emotional heart and its nostalgic point of reference.  Robert Duvall makes an impressive film debut as the ghostlike madman who, in an ironic plot twist, provides the story with its unexpected happy ending.

Robert Mulligan’s direction and Horton Foote’s screenplay capture the pathos and bleakness of Lee’s novel, whilst Russell Harlan’s stark cinematography gives it its arresting poetic dimension, which attains a haunting dreamlike quality in some of the film’s later passages.  In every department, To Kill a Mockingbird is an artistic and intellectual triumph, a worthy recipient of the three Academy Awards it won in 1963.  Peck was justly rewarded with the Best Actor Oscar and the film won awards in the Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Art Direction (Black & White) categories.  It was nominated for the Best Picture award but lost out to David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, a racially themed film of an altogether different kind.

© James Travers 2010

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?