It’s impossible to watch Robert Mulligan’s 1962 adaptation of Harper Lee’s great novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, and not be moved by Gregory Peck’s performance as Atticus Finch, a small-town American lawyer with an unfailing moral compass. Light years from the archetypal legal eagle, he radiates good old-fashioned decency, espousing tolerance and compassion that sadly feels almost passe amid the Sturm und Drang of the current world.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” goes one of Finch’s great lines, sourced from Lee’s book. In perhaps the film’s most memorable scene, Peck deliverers a grand courtroom monologue, declaring that “all men are created equal”, imploring the jury to “in the name of God, believe Tom Robinson,” the black man accused of raping a white woman – a crime he didn’t commit.
