good story, good point, good setting

Rating: 10/10 (24 October 2012)

This screen adaptation of Harper Lee's outstanding novel ought to have won the Best Picture Award of 1962, though it didn't. Gregory Peck was his pleasant, calm self, but he was a man of courage nonetheless. He was definitely brave: to defend a Negro in the 1930's South, especially in Georgia, did definitely require a plethora of courage. Brock Peters showed prowess as the black falsely accused of a heinous crime. I liked seeing Paul Fix as the local judge. As for the small part of Robert Duvall, who would have ever thought that nine years later he would be portraying a very capable and shrewd Mafia lawyer? As for the setting and the life style of a small southern town, I could identify myself with that: I was raised in a small town in central Kentucky, about five thousand in population at the time (the 1950's) where everybody knew their neighbors well. How could the point of the story not stick well to the viewers' minds? And with all the negativeness of the Great Depression, the small town lifestyle was, in its own strange way, appealing. A very drawing movie.