What's the AFI Project, you ask? For more information, or if you just enjoy my bemused ramblings, read here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/pippin06/archive/2008/3/1/25756.aspx
To Kill a Mockingbird is on the following AFI lists:
The Original Top 100 (#34)
100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains (Atticus Finch is the #1 hero)
25 Film Scores (#17)
100 Most Inspiring Movies (#2)
The Revised Top 100 (#25)
10 Top 10's (#1 Courtroom Drama)
To Kill a Mockingbird may be one of the best adapted books to screen, if not the best, ever made, for it retains the character, chronology, and tone of Harper Lee's original novel (which I did read first) without compromise. Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a lawyer, widower, and father in depression-era Alabama. He's been appointed to defend a black man, Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), against accusations of raping and beating a rather country white woman, Mayella Ewell. While an examination of prejudice is the primary thrust of the story, it's told from the perspective of Atticus' young daughter, Jean-Louise Finch aka Scout (Mary Badham), who, as narrator and an adult, remembers these days and the long, lazy summers with her older brother Jem (Philip Alford), their speculation over a neighborhood oddball they've nicknamed Boo Radley (Robert Duvall in his big screen debut, looking mighty young), and their coming to terms with the nature of prejudice as it relates both to Boo and to Tom Robinson.
To Kill a Mockingbird is also one of my most favorite movies - and books - of all time. I have owned the film for quite some time in various versions, and I feel it's another masterpiece of American cinema. The fact that it remains so true to the source material without compromising any of it is, alone, a feat of cinematic skill. All the ingredients of this film, though, are wonderful. Critics, experts, filmgoers, and even Peck's family have often said, for example, that Gregory Peck and Atticus Finch were really one and the same. There could have been no other, more perfect choice for that character. Atticus is a character of dignity, integrity, respect, and admiration, and the real man was no less a model of those attributes. The film's inspirational nature, the fact that Atticus is AFI's number one hero, could never have been so poignant or possible without Gregory Peck's iconic, signature, singular skill and his already admirable personality.
Yet, the film spends most of its time with the children, and if they weren't so natural and so likable, the thrust of the movie would be lost. Both children show a remarkably believable progression from wide-eyed innocents to children learning important lessons about human nature. I watch them, and they make me laugh or cry or smile or cringe as much as any other part of the film. They are the heart of the story and the film, while Atticus and his deeds are the soul.
The movie is also remarkable in the sense that it makes you feel as the characters are feeling quite organically. Watching it, I almost feel like I'm in the too-hot, dusty Southern summer along with the children, playing hide-and-seek, rolling around in an old tire, and watching the unjust trial of a black man in a segregationist Alabama court with bated breath, naively but optimistically hoping against the inevitable outcome. The cinematography (the courtroom is a good example, as the camera regularly scans the faces of all onlookers, as is the use of natural sunlight to paint the portrait of climate) and art direction (the little houses in Macon are accurate and realistic) are so well executed, the suspension of disbelief is complete and absolute. In addition, Elmer Bernstein's renowned score, with its simple, delicate piano theme, all at once expresses innocence and emotion, centering us on the Finch children from moment one.
What I like most about To Kill a Mockingbird, though, is how comfortable it all seems to feel, like wrapping yourself in your favorite blanket with a cup of hot cocoa or waking up to the smell of bread baking in the oven. To Kill a Mockingbird is as much about family as anything, and the genuineness of the three main actors is why the movie has stood the test of time. It's a searing portrait of racism in American history, to be sure, but it also appeals to that sense of comfort and safety that everyone hopes and needs and finds in family. After all, who hasn't wished, even on some small level, that their dad could be more like Atticus Finch.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a solid 10, a masterpiece, and belongs on those AFI lists and any other lists anyone wants to come up with. It's a true American classic - but don't discount the book. If you love one, you'll love the other, and neither should be ignored, not only for the important cultural and social messages, but, also, the book is a great piece of writing. Harper Lee, on which Scout is loosely based, has an appealing and wonderful narrative voice that translated to the screenplay and to the screen very well. If you haven't read it, you should.