To Kill a Mockingbird -- Rising up above the stereotypes.

There's something about this film that I can't quite put my finger on. In terms of film-making, it's one of the best in terms of lighting, characters, adaptation of a novel, and of course, storytelling. Told through the eyes and memories of Scout Finch, the child-heroine of the novel by Harper Lee, it's both a memoire of the Depression in the deep South, and a chilling look at human nature.

Scout (Mary Badham) is more tomboy than little girl, hanging out with her brother Jem (Philip Alford), and generally getting into mischief in the small town of Macomb. The year is 1932, and her father, Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck)is the best lawyer in town. The fact that he doesn't put on airs, and while he's not quite as poor as his clients, he's not too proud to accept payments in produce from his neighbors when they need legal help. We follow this small, close knit family throughout a typical summer's day, the children making a new friend with another child, Dill, and it is through the eyes of these children that a tale of bigotry unfolds.

That night, Judge Taylor (Paul Fix), comes to Atticus to act as a public defender for a black man. It's an unpleasant and unpopular case, as Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) is accused of raping and beating a white woman. And Atticus to his credit, does his best to defend Tom from the white population that wants to lynch him, and his children from their schoolmates and those that want to harm them because of their father. It's a tight, well-done blend of normalcy and racial tensions and hatred in an insular small town.

Director Robert Mulligan keeps the balance equal with showing both a bucolic childhood -- the first day of school sequence is priceless -- and the struggle for equal rights. It's also a snapshot of the rural South during the Depression. Women wear hats and gloves when outside, the class distinctions are clear cut, and there's even a town eccentric, by the name of Boo Radley (played by a young Robert Duvall), all given in such a natural tenor that none of it seems forced or contrived.

I won't spoil the film by giving away all of the details, but it's one of the best 'law' films ever done, with the tension and attitudes between the defendant, the accusors, judge and jury and audience being so subtle and well-wrought that it is entirely convincing, and as the jury reachs the expected verdict, the viewer is well entertained. So is the denounment that may seem anticlimatical to the audience, but will not disappoint.

Recommended for the teenage crowd and those who can suspend disbelief in a cynical world. Gregory Peck really shines as the dignified Atticus, and picked up a Best Actor Oscar in 1963 for his work, along with a Best Screenplay award for Horton Foote, as well as another Oscar for Art Direction. The use of black and white film is a great bit of metaphor, with the use of greys and shadings to give the story one of the best bits of 'color' that I've seen.

While some might decry some of the stereotypes in the story, from what I can remember of my grandparent's stories of the South in the 1930's, it really was like that. What makes the entire thing work is the way that rebellion is cloaked, and while the 'servile black' and 'superior white' is there, it also shows the begining of the fight for racial equality, and that alone makes it worth watching.