Holcomb, Mark. “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Film Quarterly 55. Issue No. 4, Summer 2002: .

Holcomb alludes to the vast influence of Robert Mulligan’s 1962 classic, To Kill A Mockingbird, whose scope stretches far beyond the confines of the film industry. The accused Tom Robinson’s lawyer, Atticus Finch, is presented as a moral paradigm in the legal realm, claiming clout as a hero who values truth and never fails to defy entrenched structures of prejudice. Once likened to a “Sunday school lesson,” the timeless Mockingbird certainly lends insight into the “moral theology” of a fictional lawyer who is lauded for his integrity and willpower to this day. The author pays tribute both to potent sentiments of nostalgia and the movie’s position as a “social problem” film, which jointly contribute the masterpiece’s “hypercinematic charge.” This article exposes the profoundly hierarchical dynamic of the social fabric in the fabricated town of Maycomb, Alabama. From a historical stance, the film remains wholly uninformed by the Civil Rights Movement; as layers of prejudice gradually unravel, the New Deal era’s liberal notions of race and class are palpable. Although the subject of racial discrimination resides at the core of the film’s argument, racism and hatred are actually deemed subsidiary to sociopolitical inequality.
A true Bildungsroman, the narrative recounts Scout’s evolution from childhood innocence to maturity through experiential learning and exposure to new perceptions of human nature. The social structure of Maycomb is disclosed from the onset of the film, in which African-Americans assume a “nebulous,” if noticeable, presence. Film scholar Linda Williams emphasizes the “melodrama of black and white” visible in the depiction of the African-American characters, Tom and Calpurnia. The comfortable and proverbial stereotypes allow Mockingbird to seamlessly obfuscate the complexities of the social issues it raises. Despite its reputed anti-prejudice theme, the lack of a unified or viable Black presence undermines Tom’s victimization. Still, the film is a bold denunciation of the “bland conformity” of the Eisenhower era, by praising Atticus’ courageous attempt to resist the status quo. Mulligan’s To Kill A Mockingbird stands as an exception to the archetypal courtroom drama; the reliance on Boo Radley’s climactic act of “rough justice” indeed undercuts the fragile authority of the American judicial system.