Nobody was bidding on the book; it was rejected by all the studios. Hard to believe of this beloved drama, but as producer Alan J Pakula admits in the hefty accompanying doc, Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel wasn’t a shoo-in for a film adaptation.
No action sequences, no love affair, and a ‘message movie’ story that winds from childhood fears to racial intolerance and back, at its own sweet pace.
But director Robert Mulligan captured the soul of the book, in the film’s unusual, even eccentric mixture of poetic lyricism and social conscience, and it’s been capturing audiences ever since.
What still grabs you with its daring is the film’s child’s-eye-view of the good and evil compressed in a small Depression-era Alabama town.
When lawyer Atticus Finch’s (Gregory Peck) two children, Scout (Mary Badham) and Jem (Phillip Alford), see off a lynch mob seeking the black man (Brock Peters) their father is defending, you can feel their bewilderment at the prejudice that turns good neighbours bad.
Their bogeyman fantasies about neighbour Boo Radley (Robert Duvall) also give the film a creeping Gothic intensity, an unexpected touch of The Night Of The Hunter eeriness.
The downside of Mulligan’s child-cam gambit is a hint of hero-worshipping naivety, and a faint unevenness as the story swings from backyard antics to righteous courtroom grandstanding.
Still, the US justice system has never looked nobler than when Gregory Peck dissects deceitful testimony and exhorts the jury to do right, in a dignified yet electrifying performance that won him an Oscar.
In contrast to his studied decency, newcomer Badham is a fresh, darting presence as Scout, cooing “Hey, Boo” in wonder at Duvall’s heroic shut-in, who conveys so much in his first bewildered glance that Peck acclaimed it as a lesson in screen acting.
The fine, if self-consciously artistic documentary packaged with this release is at its best exploring the film’s considerable craft contributions.
Take cinematographer Russell Harlan’s rich, roaming monochrome camerawork, buffed to a restored shine in this Blu-ray release till you can count the threads in Finch’s tweeds.
Then there’s Elmer Bernstein’s haunting score, which he unpicks deftly on-camera to show how he made the childishly simple melodies menacing.
Mulligan and Pakula contribute a low-key but authoritative commentary, revealing that screenwriter Horton Foote was initially scared to adapt such a universally beloved book.
He wasn’t to know that his restrained but expressive screenplay would create one of Hollywood’s most enduring book-to-screen endeavours.
DVD Extras:
- Commentary
- Documentaries
- Featurettes
