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It’s been years since I’ve seen it, so I can’t really write a detailed response to this. However, in general, the movie leaves a bad taste in my mouth because while it pats itself on the back for dealing with “racial” issues, it does so in a safe, even patronizing way, and deals with such questions only insofar as they affect the white protagonists. The housemaid is just as thinly characterized as the accused rapist, and the film resounds with a kind of self-congratulatory acceptance of the status quo; the system doesn’t need to be changed, you just have to remember your white man’s burden and act honorably *within *that system.
There are many other films that deal more honestly with questions of Race and the Old South, but IMO, *TKaM *is more interested in giving a mostly white audience something to safely congratulate itself about than it is in honestly, directly addressing those questions. (As an example, the black characters in John Ford’s Judge Priest may be arguably portrayed, by the actors acting in the accepted style of the time (28 years before TKaM), as–externally–stereotypes. But their interactions and friendships with the white characters in the film are human, and real, and fully realized; they come across as whole human beings, not just as Symbols for Racial Issues.)
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Although I think Mockingbird is one of the best films to take a child’s-eye view of the world, I know I’ve argued before on this board that it’s a film that handles issues of race from a comfortably stacked deck. Atticus Finch? Genuinely human, but also absolutely perfect. The Ewells? Thoroughly irredeemable and detestable in every conceiveable way. Tom Robinson? Your quintessential victim and, like the Ewells, one-dimensional. The trial, evidence and final verdict (as well as Tom’s final fate)? Specifically triangulated to exploit even the most close-minded person’s sense of outrage. Were black people treated as such and worse? Of course. But Harper Lee positions all her players so that the conflict is seen in the most obvious (and predictable) black-and-white terms (so to speak). Racism is BAD. It’s a perfect story for, say, early teens, because they have a protagonist to identify with and it paints some of the truly heinous examples of racial prejudice in accessible (but still unflinching) terms. But for more adult viewers, it simply reinforces our own sense of moral self-regard, especially since the film is a period film, so even people in the 60s could look at the story and say, “Well, things aren’t as bad as that anymore.” And in that sense, I agree completely with lissener about its self-congratulatory air.
I think a far better film (from a more sophisticated story) is Clarence Brown’s Intruder in the Dust, from the William Faulkner novel. The lawyer hero, Gavin Stevens, isn’t perfect–he’s liberal, open-minded, but still susceptible to the same innate prejudices that can be found in rural Mississippi. Essentially, he’s more believable than Atticus Finch (if not quite as likable). Lucas Beauchamp, the black man on trial for murdering a white local, is prickly, uncooperative, “uppity”, and a royal pain-in-the-ass. He’s also smart, dignified, and unwilling to allow the white people around him to act as his “savior”, even when it’s his neck on the line. The Gowrie family (kin to the murdered man) are initially presented as ignorant white trash, but as the story progresses, there are unexpected depths and complexities that show that even hateful racists still have recognizable human qualities. They are people, not simply villanious devices to get the theme across. And when it comes to heroism, Atticus has nothing on Eunice Habersham, the old matron who sits in her rocking chair, shotgun in hand, facing off a surly lynch mob with her quiet rectitude. It’s a remarkable movie (with a perfectly appropriate, unsentimental ending) that takes place in the Southern here-and-now (the film was made in 1949), not the Southern way-back-when. And the acting across-the-board is superlative.
Mockingbird is indeed a lovely film and an excellent adaptation, and Peck has never been better (though I also agree either 12 O’Clock High or The Gunfighter are actually his best films). But it’s also a safe movie, cozy and comforting about our own “advanced” perceptions of race and justice. Dust leaves us with no obvious hero (though plenty of nobility to go around) and not as many convenient answers. And that is why I, too, think the former, while good and well-acted, is vastly overrated and the latter sorely underappreciated (it’s not even available on DVD). And Dust isn’t the only film to deal more interestingly, and provocatively, about race pre-1962, so while Mockingbird is sensitive and lovely, it’s in no way particularly ground-breaking in its handling of the subject.
But meanwhile…