Some film classics are time tested for their greatness, if not more beloved and significant now than upon their release; others are great by association.
The film adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” may just fall into the latter category, the book that everyone read in high school, followed immediately by the movie everyone saw in high school. Maybe it gets some holiday TV time, and the book is so indisputably a classic that it’s hard to see the movie as anything else.
It’s possible then that Robert Mulligan’s film gets a few passes it perhaps doesn’t deserve. The average, casual movie watcher can lump “To Kill a Mockingbird” in on their lists of black and white movies they’ve actually seen along with “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the first part of “The Wizard of Oz”. It was nominated for Best Picture in 1962, losing to a real classic, “Lawrence of Arabia”. And Gregory Peck won the Oscar for Best Actor, years later also taking the American Film Institute’s title for the greatest American movie hero.
But does it actually do anything especially great? An easy analysis might say no. This is Old Hollywood through and through, full of toothless, folksy charm and Hays Code-friendly gestures of racism and violence. “To Kill a Mockingbird” only achieves the social and racial poignancy by riding the coattails of its richer source material, and even then it’s very much rooted to its times.
To play along the racial language, the touches of greatness in “To Kill a Mockingbird” are more than skin deep. Continue reading “Rapid Response: To Kill a Mockingbird”