The Semiquincentennial Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).
Week #22: Alabama -
Details about Alabama:
State bird: yellowhammer
State flower: southern long leaf pine
State tree: camellia
Additional historical trivia:
Rosa Parks became one of the icons of the civil rights movement when she refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery.
Although celebrating Mardi Gras is most associated with New Orleans, the first Mardi Gras celebration in the U.S. happened in Mobile in 1703.
In 1836 Alabama became the first state to declare Christmas a holiday.
Without the Saturn V rocket, the moon landing doesn't happen. It was developed in Huntsville.
The oldest baseball stadium that is still in use is located in Birmingham.
Birmingham is the site of one of the most specialized bookstores in the world. The Alabama Booksmith only sells books that have been signed by the authors. (But, no, apparently they do not currently have a copy of the novel that inspired today's movie...)
Famous people born in Alabama: Harper Lee, Rosa Parks, Jim Nabors, Courtney Cox, Hank Williams, Nat King Cole, Helen Keller, Jesse Owens, Hank Aaron and Martin Luther King, Jr.
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962):
The film begins in the quiet town of Maycomb, Alabama. "Scout" Finch (Mary Badham) and her brother, Jem (Phillip Alford), await their father, Atticus (Gregory Peck), to come home. In the meantime they meet a neighbor kid, Charles Baker Harris (John Megna). The three have a great rapport (such innocence as children had, and maybe still have, for all I know).
The children teach other little things about the neighbors and townspeople, including some of those rumors that often develop among children, such as the highly "dangerous" neighbor, Boo Radley, whom no one ever sees because he is supposedly chained up in the basement and only comes out at night. And Mrs. Dubose, a crotchety old woman next door, who antagonizes the children with somewhat veiled threats of what they will end up becoming when they grow up. Both of these characters are kind of like the boogeyman for the children, because after all, a part of growing up requires that children have some sort of boogeyman to be afraid of, whether or not such boogeymen really are worthy of that fear.
In the background (as yet not the foreground) is the local judge coming to Atticus to try to get him to be the defense lawyer for a local black man who has been accused of rape of a white woman. In another world, the real world at the time, in other words, the black man probably would have already been lynched, without a trial. But then if that happened we would have no story.
Atticus is a proud man who has conscience and a ideal of doing what is right. As he tells Scout who asks why he is defending Tom:
“If I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.”
Whether or not he initially believes in the innocence of his client at the beginning is not important. What matters is that Atticus is adamant that Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) be given a fair shake and a fair trial, and not just convicted by the prevailing crowd without said trial. There is a lynch mob that shows up midway through the film with that exact intention... This not being a Perry Mason mystery, we don't get a lot of investigation into the facts of the story. What comes out of the truth of the actual story is only played out during the trial.
The trial itself seems a little unbelievable. Not the facts that come out, mind you, but the lack of a crowd reaction to Atticus' questions posed to the witnesses. I kept expecting outrage from someone in the crowd, but instead the only reactions come from whomever is on the witness stand at the time. The most difficult part of this is there is no reaction to Atticus' basic accusations: a) that Tom is being railroaded and b) that the victim, Mayella (Collin Wilcox), was more or less the instigator not the victim. I would have expected a riot or at least someone trying to shout down Atticus at this point.
Of course, you may or may not know how the trial came out. In an effort to play fair, I will thus say spoiler alert! Tom is convicted of the crime, this despite the fact that Atticus pretty much exposed the whole thing as a lie on the part of Mayella and her father. The upshot is that Tom is carted off to prison, but is supposedly shot while trying to escape. (I will interject an opinion here: While the "escape" and "shooting" may have been accepted as plausible by the 60's audience, the cynic in me says that may not be how it really played out. Yet the film seems to want us to accept the story as told by the sheriff).
There is still a bit of story left, including a revelation of who the mysterious Boo Radley (Robert Duvall) is. Hint: he is NOT the boogeyman. (And, although he never utters a word, Duvall made enough of an impression in his first film role that his one scene is fairly memorable).
Although the film is primarily about Atticus and his efforts to defend a black man, Tom, in the rape trial, there are also some aspects of it that dwell on the lifestyle of a small town, and the film is sometimes a love letter to a more idyllic time. Sure, the racism aspect stands out in stark contrast against the backdrop, but some of the scenes come off a bit elegiac. Especially early on in the film. The point of the film, and the novel it was based on, was, of course, to focus on the racial prejudices of the era.
(A side note: One of my pet peeves is when a book or a movie is banned or criticized for pointing out what was historically accurate. The book, along with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has been targeted in recent years for banning, simply because black people are referred to as "niggers", as they are also in the film. It seems that the current PC crowd want to erase the fact that at one time there was an inequality between the white and black people. While I don't think it was a fair way to treat a fellow man, I also don't believe in trying to censor a part of history just because we are supposed to be more enlightened now).
To Kill a Mockingbird was nominated for 8 Oscars. In a different year it might have won more than the three it did win. It had the misfortune of competing for Best Picture that year with Lawrence of Arabia (the winner), as well as The Longest Day and The Music Man. (Mutiny on the Bounty was also a candidate, but personally I prefer the Clark Gable and the Mel Gibson versions). It also lost Best Director to David Lean for the aforementioned Lawrence of Arabia. Mary Badham was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress but lost to Patty Duke for The Miracle Worker. It did win in the category of Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay, both times beating out the Lawrence film.
It was the 6th highest grossing film of the year (although, technically, most of it's ticket sales probably came in 1963. It was released on Christmas Day of 1962). It was a critical success, too. It currently holds a 93% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and among it's advocates was Bosley Crowther who praised the "charming enactments of a father and his children in that close relationship, which can occur at only one brief period"and that that part of it was "worth all the footage of the film". Even in today's age it still gets it's share of praise.
A couple of things worth pointing out as a wrap-up: The narration of the film is done by Kim Stanley, who in 1982 was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. James Earl Jones was one of the actors that auditioned for the role that eventually went to Brock Peters. Peters, BTW, had another connection to Jones; while Jones was the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars films, it was Peters who did the voice on the radio versions of the stories.
It is a worthy film. It ranks #34 on A.F.I.'s 100 Greatest Films. Check it out if you haven't already seen it. Until next time, drive safely, folks.
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