One Bad Egg

Rating: Null/10 (1 August 2002)

Spoilers herein.
Here is a film that is impossible to view as it was intended. That is because its effect was dependent on the cultural context in which it appeared. It was bold, working to explicitly redefine decency during one of the periodic self-examinations of the country. I saw it in 1962, and both of us are quite different now.
Judging it now, apart from its historical significance, there seem some major inadequacies. In my mind, this is very much like `How Green Was My Valley,' which was wonderfully photographed and staged, but which had a hokey, romanticized story and some unrealistic acting. Here too. Peck may have been a loved performer, but he just doesn't have the stuff for this role. Everyone else who is on screen outacts him, is more real. More rooted in place. More naturally motivated.
The book uses the thread of the story (sexual frustration, false accusation, cowardly herd condemnation, resentful attack, salvation by an innocent guardian) as mere chickenwire into which is woven many terrific small chunks of language. That language is not poetic in the sense of using the familiar to define the unfamiliar; instead it works the other way and is shocking and effective. To appreciate the book, you have to know Truman Capote's manner of enlarging the small, finding decision points inside characters and stringing them together in an external logic. Lee's approach to writing is to add another layer of observation: essentially she is reporting her view of what his view would have been. (The Dill character is Capote.) The mockingbird is a mimic who reports the songs of other birds found in its territory. It is fiercely territorial and seems to define its own identity as definer/reporter of that place.
The film jettisons all this to give us a simple morality play. What a scandal. If the primary tone of the book is the respect for the richness of tradition in place, that respect is trampled by Hollywood. Well, nothing new there.
But what we do get is some very interesting staging of the children. These kids are so formally choreographed, it is almost balletic. There is some movement, sometimes rushing movement, but everything is toward the goal of getting them in lovely group positions. Very theatrical, and I must say, very effective. None of their movements are natural, all come from the director's mind. But they perform them naturally, and this carries over the philosophy of how the story is told in the book. Some of the spooky staging is from "Meet Me in St Louis."
This film has a very high rating in the IMDB system. I suppose most of these votes come from schoolchildren who are assigned this film as homework. The level of the morality play is just right for them, and they feel enobled.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.