Leisurely paced & beautifully enacted

Rating: Null/10 (26 February 2003)

Based on Harper Lee's sole 196O Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, this film is a special favourite for many who relish it as a reminder of their own rural childhoods: I'm one such viewer. A beautifully haunting movie, it casts a strange, almost poetically wistful spell over the viewer coupled with some genuinely chilling & emotionally affecting moments. Gregory Peck is wholly believable and suitable personality -wise in his portrayal of Atticus Finch the forty-something widower of two children, Jean Louise, better known as Scout, and Jeremy, whose nick-name is Jem. The magnificent black-and-white photography makes the painstaking 3O's ambience seem genuinely realised and Elmer Bernstein's wisfully haunting score is recognised as a classic composition. Mary Badham's playing of Scout is so natural-like that she can be likened to actually being the character she plays. As Jem, Philip Alford isn't far behind & together they are wholly believable as siblings. Dill Harris was described as a towhead in Lee's novel, but he is generally accepted by fans who associate John Megna's somewhat bizarre interpretation of the lad who was based on Harper Lee's childhood friend, Truman Capote. Colin Wilcox as Violet Ewell is an inspired piece of casting: she brings real conviction to her role as the pathethically desperate white trash daughter of an illiterate drunk. Alice Ghostley is briefly seen as the funny Miss Stephanie and Estelle Evans plays Calpurnia with warmth: she is the children's surrogate mother. A long, nostalgic journey into 1932 Alabama, this film is both funny and sad, scary and tearjerking.