One of the Most Important Movies
4/4 stars

To Kill a Mockingbird is on my top 3 movies everyone must see. It is the best faithful adaptation of a book that I have ever watched. Gregory peck captures Atticus Finch perfectly. I urge everyone to first READ THE BOOK and then see this movie. I watch it every time it is on TV. It is simply wonderful.

I am glad that, though this movie came out in 1962, they chose to shoot it in black and white. A completely different mood comes out, by presenting this movie in those softer, darker colors. "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" also came out in 1962; it was a black and white movie as well. I recall reading that Bette Davis talked to that film's producer, and threw her support behind the idea of filming that story without color (again to create a darker mood).

Actually, there are at least three things that a black and white "Mockingbird" does. One: it complements the serious and tragic tone of the story. Two: it complements some of the childhood memories which are rather spooky and akin to a horror movie. Three: This is, after all, 1932 Macon, Georgia. The black and white colors do kind of take us back to a world which no longer exists (and a world which was right in the middle of the Great Crash/Depression). Many people who were adults, then (or were children having to pitch in during this national crisis), developed a completely different mindset; a mindset that so many of us will never know (of course the Depression aspect is greatly overshadowed, in this film, by the theme of a Black man accused of impropriety with a White woman in the early 30s Deep South).

It is hard to know where to begin, with a movie of this great caliber. I will just throw some of my thoughts out, and let the chips fall where they may. I thought that the theme song for "Mockingbird", which begins and ends the film, was truly an incredibly beautiful song. At the end of the film this music is like a song of TRIUMPH! It is also a very TOUCHING song. Elmer Bernstein, the composer of this music, said in a documentary that he was going for a kind of child-like tune-----one in which a child would just be playing around with a few keys on a piano. Mr. Bernstein certainly transformed that tune into a very sentimental piece, that kind of tugs at your heart strings.

The first time that I saw this movie, I was not paying complete attention, and I thought that one of Atticus Finch's (the lead character played by Gregory Peck) loved one's had died, on account of the unpopular stance that he took. I teared up, as the movie closed out with that powerful music (not realizing that "good" had almost completely overtaken "evil", here).

Of course I cannot comment on "Mockingbird" without alluding to Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch. What a wonderfully noble and good man! You could say, more specifically, that he was a wonderful father (especially raising two children as a widower, and a very busy attorney). Of all the moving and powerful interactions he had with his children, what impressed me most was how he reasoned with them as if they were little adults (rather than "children"). He never seemed to talk down to them. He tried to talk (and negotiate) with them, as close as he could, to one of his peers (a very interesting irony, since both his children called him "Atticus" and not Dad or Daddy!).

So It's Up There with Schindler's List as one of the most important films everyone has to see in thier life times.

To Kill a Mockingbird
Robert Mulligan
Gregory Peck, Mary Badham
PG for Racism aspects
129 minutes, 2 hours 9 minutes

Review by Wolfman