PROGRAMME

To Kill a Mockingbird

Movie Tring Classics

This is a beautifully crafted and faithful screen adaptation (by playwright Horton Foote, who won an Oscar) of the now-classic Harper Lee novel about a lawyer in the Deep South and the effect of a rape trial on his children. Gregory Peck won the best actor Oscar as Atticus Finch, but in truth he’s ill-cast - if ever a role was meant for Henry Fonda it was this one. Robert Duvall, making his screen debut as the disturbed Boo Radley, is excellent, as are the well-cast children (Phillip Alford and Mary Badham, sister of film-maker John Badham), and Robert Mulligan’s direction is quietly impressive (even if the film’s a shade overlong). The book was once considered strong stuff, but is now taught in schools everywhere.

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