Great Film with One of the Greatest Performances

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2019)

The story of a widowed small town southern lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) with two small children who takes on the case of a black man charged with the rape of a white woman in the 1930's. Despite the possible harm to his own career and threats of harm Atticus pursues what he believes to be the just and right course of action under the watchful eyes of the town and his children.
While I have always greatly appreciated any film that can create a sense of time and place, for me very few films can compare with To Kill a Mockingbird for this transcendent quality.
Although I certainly respect the dramatic abilities of Gregory Peck he is not my favorite actor, although in this role he delivers one of my favorite performances of all time. He is note perfect in creating a heroic fatherly figure that still feels like a real person. The role earned Peck his only Oscar after four other nominations.
In addition to Peck we also see the film debut of another great actor with Robert Duvall's small but integral role and we have many very good supporting performances including Brock Peters in one of his first film roles as Atticus's client.
Although Robert Mulligan would direct some other successful films this film stands head and shoulders above his other achievements.
The cinematography of Russell Harlan should also be acknowledged it earned him one of his 6 Oscar nominations.
Based upon the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Harper Lee, the novel is at least semi-auto biographical with Scout filling in for Lee and supposedly Scout's friend Dill was based on her friend Truman Capote. Strangely Harper Lee would never write anything more other than some essay's, there have been entirely unsubstantiated rumors that Lee did not write the book or at least received considerable assistance from Capote. The script was adapted by Horton Foote and earned him his first of two Oscars, Lee herself was greatly impressed by his adaptation.