Every so often, as sure as night follows day, a film comes along thatmanages to transport us from our everyday lives and into a time and placethat is recalled through memories of better and in a reversal of fortunes,turbulent times. To Kill A Mockingbird is such a film.
In a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Harper Lee, the small town of Macomb,Alabama is portrayed in the summer of 1932, during the deepest depressionthat the United States had ever experienced. Over the course of the nextyear and a half, events will burrow inside this sleepy southern town andthe lives of its residents will be transported by actions, ideas,perceptions and convictions that will influence one, and all, in ways thatwill ring true for years to come.
Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a lawyer and widower, raising two smallchildren: Scout (Mary Badham) and her older brother Jem (Phillip Alford).Into their lives enters a visitor, Dill (John Megna) from Meridian,Mississippi, who is spending two weeks with his Aunt Stephanie (AliceGhostley). Macomb is a town with nothing to do and, if there were, no moneyto spend on it. The stage is being set for a life-shattering episode thatwill not go quietly into that good night.
Childhood holds its fascinations, its myths, its coming of age and, throughthe eyes of the three children, the audience is allowed to peer into theadult world around them as perceived through the minds and souls ofinnocence that will be all too easily shattered as time whistles down thetrack. One of the stories woven so masterfully within its covers is thelocal urban legend of the bogeyman, Boo Radley (Robert Duval), who lives onthe same block as the Finch family. In a narration, rather like playingtelephone, his persona takes on all the familiar attributes of a ravinglunatic, a monster out for blood. His aura becomes the end all for Scout,Jem and Dill as they seek to master the mystery surrounding Boo and theability to live to tell the tale!
Into this world of innocence, a shattering crescendo of complexity wrapsitself in the lives of the townspeople in the form of an alleged rape of awhite woman, Mayella Violet Ewell (Collin Wilcox), by a black man, TomRobinson (Brock Peters). Atticus Finch is called upon to act as counsel forRobinson and, in doing so, the stage has been set for a dance with racerelations and the exemplary lengths taken in order to allow justice toprevail in the face of malcontent.
The performances throughout To Kill A Mockingbird are stunning. GregoryPeck, as the gentleman lawyer who is mired in small town attitudes andthoughts that were so representational in the southern gothic sphere, hascollected and held a restrained order to his character, and in the process,he has allowed us all to be on the receiving end of hate as conveyedthrough the actions of small minds and small people. The children,especially Mary Badham, are siblings of more than a movie-making venture.They show the absence of preconceived notions and the guile of beingsbefore the actions of adults can render their world as lost and gone withthe shedding of time.
James Anderson as Tom Ewell is the complete representation of oily slime asMayella's father. He embodies all of the hate and prejudice that continuesto be harboured to this day in the souls of those who would attempt towield their vision of the way things should and ought to be. He has a foulbaseness that lingers like a bad rash as he attempts to invoke hisarguments through drunken bullying and hatred. Collin Willcox, as Mayella,is excruciatingly convincing as the bored house-bound white woman who triesto tempt Tom Robinson into kissing her and through her actions sets inmotion a rollercoaster of tragedy to come. Her speech to the assembledcourtroom is superb and as the audience, you feel her anger and resentmentat having to be put in such a position, having to lie to save face and whatlittle position she has in the town. Brock Peters, as the aforementionedRobinson, is equally sure in the allotted time he spends on the screen.
There is a noble demeanor to his bearing and yet we are aware of therestrictions to which blacks were held in their relationships with whitesat the time.
Robert Mulligan, the director, and Horton Foote, the screenwriter, havepresented us with a look into our pasts and faithfully etched a portrait ofquiet and artfully rendered proportions that draw us into the canvas andthe lives of those assembled. We have walked a mile in their shoes and havebeen under their skin. Foote worried about being able to do justice toLee's novel, but he worried for nothing. He has completely evoked a timeperiod that now rests behind clouds of dust, blown by the winds of timeinto oblivion.
The cinematography by Russell Harlan and the set decoration by OIiver Emertcarry us back through the courtesy of black and white to a depiction seenonly in old photographs and clouding memories of those who lived in thoseprecarious times. Black and white films seem to have had a curse thrustupon them by the younger generation today, as boring and tedious, butthrough the courtesies extended by Harlan and Emert, we are richer forthose perceptions that would harken back throughout the pages of history.
Elmer Bernstein's film score carries us like an old friend and helps us tomake our acquaintances with the characters held within this framework. Hehas achieved much with a simple theme and persuades us that such simplicityis fulfilled with less rather than more.
To Kill A Mockingbird is beautifully haunting and having been made in the'60s, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, it garners our attentionto stop and take the time to truly 'see' what the human race is all aboutand what it can and should be, if taken over the bumps in the road and ontoa path of sincere honesty and purpose. No special effects were needed, nohuge Hollywood budget, no splashing of a story that had a happy ending foreveryone involved. It is an open book into the realities of a world tiltingtemporarily off its axis and being brought back on track through thegoodness that sits in the hearts, minds and souls of mankind, if given halfa chance. See it and be amazed at what real moviemaking is all about.
Mary F. Sibley
To Kill A Mockingbird
Every so often, as sure as night follows day, a film comes along thatmanages to transport us from our everyday lives and into a time and placethat is recalled through memories of better and in a reversal of fortunes,turbulent times. To Kill A Mockingbird is such a film.
In a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Harper Lee, the small town of Macomb,Alabama is portrayed in the summer of 1932, during the deepest depressionthat the United States had ever experienced. Over the course of the nextyear and a half, events will burrow inside this sleepy southern town andthe lives of its residents will be transported by actions, ideas,perceptions and convictions that will influence one, and all, in ways thatwill ring true for years to come.
Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a lawyer and widower, raising two smallchildren: Scout (Mary Badham) and her older brother Jem (Phillip Alford).Into their lives enters a visitor, Dill (John Megna) from Meridian,Mississippi, who is spending two weeks with his Aunt Stephanie (AliceGhostley). Macomb is a town with nothing to do and, if there were, no moneyto spend on it. The stage is being set for a life-shattering episode thatwill not go quietly into that good night.
Childhood holds its fascinations, its myths, its coming of age and, throughthe eyes of the three children, the audience is allowed to peer into theadult world around them as perceived through the minds and souls ofinnocence that will be all too easily shattered as time whistles down thetrack. One of the stories woven so masterfully within its covers is thelocal urban legend of the bogeyman, Boo Radley (Robert Duval), who lives onthe same block as the Finch family. In a narration, rather like playingtelephone, his persona takes on all the familiar attributes of a ravinglunatic, a monster out for blood. His aura becomes the end all for Scout,Jem and Dill as they seek to master the mystery surrounding Boo and theability to live to tell the tale!
Into this world of innocence, a shattering crescendo of complexity wrapsitself in the lives of the townspeople in the form of an alleged rape of awhite woman, Mayella Violet Ewell (Collin Wilcox), by a black man, TomRobinson (Brock Peters). Atticus Finch is called upon to act as counsel forRobinson and, in doing so, the stage has been set for a dance with racerelations and the exemplary lengths taken in order to allow justice toprevail in the face of malcontent.
The performances throughout To Kill A Mockingbird are stunning. GregoryPeck, as the gentleman lawyer who is mired in small town attitudes andthoughts that were so representational in the southern gothic sphere, hascollected and held a restrained order to his character, and in the process,he has allowed us all to be on the receiving end of hate as conveyedthrough the actions of small minds and small people. The children,especially Mary Badham, are siblings of more than a movie-making venture.They show the absence of preconceived notions and the guile of beingsbefore the actions of adults can render their world as lost and gone withthe shedding of time.
James Anderson as Tom Ewell is the complete representation of oily slime asMayella's father. He embodies all of the hate and prejudice that continuesto be harboured to this day in the souls of those who would attempt towield their vision of the way things should and ought to be. He has a foulbaseness that lingers like a bad rash as he attempts to invoke hisarguments through drunken bullying and hatred. Collin Willcox, as Mayella,is excruciatingly convincing as the bored house-bound white woman who triesto tempt Tom Robinson into kissing her and through her actions sets inmotion a rollercoaster of tragedy to come. Her speech to the assembledcourtroom is superb and as the audience, you feel her anger and resentmentat having to be put in such a position, having to lie to save face and whatlittle position she has in the town. Brock Peters, as the aforementionedRobinson, is equally sure in the allotted time he spends on the screen.
There is a noble demeanor to his bearing and yet we are aware of therestrictions to which blacks were held in their relationships with whitesat the time.
Robert Mulligan, the director, and Horton Foote, the screenwriter, havepresented us with a look into our pasts and faithfully etched a portrait ofquiet and artfully rendered proportions that draw us into the canvas andthe lives of those assembled. We have walked a mile in their shoes and havebeen under their skin. Foote worried about being able to do justice toLee's novel, but he worried for nothing. He has completely evoked a timeperiod that now rests behind clouds of dust, blown by the winds of timeinto oblivion.
The cinematography by Russell Harlan and the set decoration by OIiver Emertcarry us back through the courtesy of black and white to a depiction seenonly in old photographs and clouding memories of those who lived in thoseprecarious times. Black and white films seem to have had a curse thrustupon them by the younger generation today, as boring and tedious, butthrough the courtesies extended by Harlan and Emert, we are richer forthose perceptions that would harken back throughout the pages of history.
Elmer Bernstein's film score carries us like an old friend and helps us tomake our acquaintances with the characters held within this framework. Hehas achieved much with a simple theme and persuades us that such simplicityis fulfilled with less rather than more.
To Kill A Mockingbird is beautifully haunting and having been made in the'60s, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, it garners our attentionto stop and take the time to truly 'see' what the human race is all aboutand what it can and should be, if taken over the bumps in the road and ontoa path of sincere honesty and purpose. No special effects were needed, nohuge Hollywood budget, no splashing of a story that had a happy ending foreveryone involved. It is an open book into the realities of a world tiltingtemporarily off its axis and being brought back on track through thegoodness that sits in the hearts, minds and souls of mankind, if given halfa chance. See it and be amazed at what real moviemaking is all about.
