To Kill a Mockingbird

A few weeks back I was in The Warehouse buying up large of their really cheap dog toys & treats. I also spent the best part of an hour going through their DVD section & sale bin.

By golly, some of those DVDs are so cheap it is well worth taking a punt. There are no end of A-Z grade John Wayne movies, tedious Elizabeth Taylor fillers, and even a large selection of 3 Stooges supposed comedies. It's a reminder (much like Turners Classic Movies programming), that far more than now, a big classic movie star (like Wayne, or Taylor), made hundreds of movies, yet are justifiably only remembered now for a handful of classics. The rest are forgotten for a reason.

Anyhow, I came away with:

The Shooting - an odd Western starring a very young Jack Nicholson. It's in my book of Cult Movies & for an outlay of something like $5.95, I figured I should really have a look. I haven't yet though.

The General - old Buster Keaton silent classic. I saw & wrote an essay on this at University. Based on a true story, it follows train driver Keaton during the American Civil War, chasing & recovering his beloved stolen train, and slightly less beloved kidnapped fiance. It is in a word, brilliant! I believe at the time it was the most expensive movie ever made. Mostly because he trashes a rail bridge & an entire train in spectacular fashion near the end.

To Catch a Thief - the Hitchcock classic with Cary Grant & Grace Kelly. And unbelievably, this has dated somewhat. In fact, the first half is so camp (I think mostly because of the Edith Head designs worn by Grant), it is distracting. Monacco & Grace Kelly look great though. This was the only DVD that cost me over $10.

And To Kill a Mockingbird - I'd never seen this movie, nor read the novel from which it sprang. But the girls just happened to forget to go get a mindless comedy on Saturday night, and I'd packed this away with the laptop.

And it is magnificent! A few scenes reminded me of that Southern Gothic classic Night of the Hunter. But it's nowhere near as dark & creepy as that. And that might only be because, like NotH it's told from the point of view of a 6 year old girl & her brother, and the scene where Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch sits on a chair outside the jailhouse & confronts a would be lynch mob (it reminded me of Lillian Gish, looking for all the world like the Grandma in the Tweety & Sylvester cartoons, calmly rocking back & forth on the verandah, cradling a very large shotgun, waiting for Robert Mitchum's evil preacher to turn up... she's got him sussed... one of the very best scenes in one of the very best movies I have ever seen).

Anyway... Peck is suitably stiff & staunch (and possibly so wooden as to be his era's Keanu) as small town lawyer, solo dad & American icon, Atticus Finch, taking on the job of defending a black man accused of raping & beating a white woman. It's the kids who are a revelation (Mary Badham & Philip Alford), the little girl on whom it all centres especially. These are not cute kids (not overly anyway), they're quarrelsome, mischievous, argumentative, resourceful and intelligent. And we see the whole story (and some other peripheral, but important events) unfold through their eyes.

There's also what amounts pretty much to a cameo by Robert Duval, in surely one of his earliest roles, playing Boo Radford, the reputed village idiot. He plays a pivotal role in the movie, and rounds out the children's lesson about discrimination.

I'm willing to bet that some scenes were taken direct from the book, the script has that intelligent feel to it and doesn't spell things out for the moronic. There are little vignettes of the kind that I tend to associate with novels from the Great Depression (The Grapes of Wrath is full of them) - like when the title's reference is explained - I had to think pretty hard about what they were getting at... or the things left in the tree for the children by Boo... or when Atticus is persuaded to shoot the rabid dog... you know these moments are important, even if it's not obvious why. Or maybe I'm just slow.

Not explaining that very well. So let's move on....

Anyway... if you haven't seen it yet, To Kill a Mockingbird is an absolute & intelligent pleasure. Who knows, I might even read it once I start & finish Isabelle Allende's new Zorro novel - isn't that a very cool cover?