A masterpiece, a splendid cinematographic voyage:

Rating: 10/10 (26 July 2016)

A fabulous screenplay, brilliant performances, masterful direction, beautiful cinematography and production design. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962) is one of a kind of an experience in the art of cinema.
Atticus (Gregory Peck, Academy Award of best actor) is a lawyer of a small town in Alabama, in a Great Depression era. Judge of town assigns him to defend a black humble man, Tom Robinson (Brock Peters, fantastic) unfairly accused for the rape of a white maiden, Mayella (Collin Wilcox Paxton, a well-directed standard actress).
What follows is a background for a fundamental Socratic question: Is It possible to be fair, in a unfair city? Question imposes itself in two crucial moments of the story, and it is answered by two different ways, exposing tears of racism and other awful prejudices. Peck is heart touching, empathic, dramatic but not ridiculous. In that very year, his contenders where not less than Jack Lemmon (Days of Wines and Roses), Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia), Mastroianni and Burt Lancaster, a titanic setlist that enlightens even more his (nevertheless well deserved) victory. His speech at court is mesmerizing, one of the greatest performances on screen, featuring only one cut in more than nine minutes. His sons are beautifully lived by Mary Bradham (herself a nominated), and Phillip Alford, bringing even more light to the perfect screenplay.
Atticus by itself is not a aleatory name: it means "Man of Attica", region of Athens, in Ancient Greece, where Socrate flourished and took the most important step in thinking history, philosophizing about the Human Being, instead of Cosmos. Moral questions faced by the principal character are answered sometimes by himself, sometimes by others, named the scene where his daughter gives to the men of the unfair city a exquisite lesson about to be righteous.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is a unmissable movie, a proof of the wonderful transforming capacity of cinema.