To Kill a Mocking

To Kill a Mocking Bird, Personal Cinematic History

Manny Lincoln

Black and White cinematography gives a dream like feel of capturing the past.  The black and white adds rich textures, subtle and dramatic shading to the story.  The black and white also added rich shadows to many scenes that created a foreboding and mysterious feel.  The plot has a lot to do with children discovering the mysteries of life and fearing the unknow.  So the heavy shadows add to the feeling of unknown.  Although, I did not like the selection of very dark-skinned black people to play the black characters in the movie showed the stereotypical prejudice of the people during the 1960’s.  The black and white film emphasized their dark skin in a disturbing way to me.

I have never read, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and was amazed by the strong story.  The story is narrated by the now adult Scout Finch remembering her childhood during the 1930’s great depression in a small southern town.  The story has three plots simultaneously woven into the movie.  All three plots rely on each other to answer the ending scene.  The first plot is about Scout’s difficulties understanding adult behavior and unhappiness of having to “act like a girl”, it is a coming of age story about six-year-old Scout.   The second plot is about her father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer who defends Tom Robinson, a black man who is falsely accused and tried for rape by the white community.  The third plot is about Arthur “Boo” Radley, a reclusive man who lives in a broken-down house on their street.

The movie is seen through the eyes of a child.  Scout is 6 years old.  She runs and skips from embarrassing moments, dangerous moments, tragedies, life lessons, as her character reveals the story.   She is present at all the events that tell the story of her father, Tom Robinson and Bo Radlie.

Atticus Finch and Bo Radlie are the two hero’s in the movie.  Atticus is to perfect to true to be real.   He never loses his patience, is all knowing, the perfect single Dad, always fair and doing the right things without taking any credit.  Bo Radlie is the towns never seen mystery man suffering from mental illness, he never leaves his house, yet his presence in the neighborhood is always felt and talked about.  Atticus is the lawyer for the falsely accused black man, whose trial reveals the prejudice of the town.  Attiicus is the classic hero of good versus evil plot.   At the same time Bo Radlie is the misunderstood hero hiding in his house, the opposite of the noble Atticus hero, with everyone making up stories about him being violent and crazy.

The movie was progressive for its time.  It portrays the controversial social problems of racial problems.  This was before the Detroit race riots, Martin Luther King’s assignation, lynching’s were still going on in the south and the KKK was still publicly popular. To Kill a Mocking Bird, tells the story of racial social problems and fear of mental illness through the eyes of a little girl growing up. I recently saw, Spike Lees, “The Black Klansman”, and both movies cover many of the same issues of racism that the United States has been struggling with for hundreds of years.

It is a really good movie with many ideas that made me think about my life and the things in the news. Although sometimes the kids seemed to act more adult than as children really would.

During my historical research, I found a map published by, The Equal Justice Initiative, illustrates more than 4,000 documented lynching between 1915 and 1964.   Newspaper articles and photographs from the turn of the 1900’s to the 1960 support the validity of the racism portrayed in “To Kill a Mocking Bird”.  Being a minority, I am sensitive and see similarities from the past inequities to what is present in the news articles today.  The movie, “To Kill a Mocking Bird”, gives depth to the motives and traditions that still exist today.   I was surprised by how well this movie depicts racism.  It must have been a bold move for the movie to have portrayed these problems in 1962.

I was shocked to find many post cards and newspaper photographs of lynched black people with large crowds of white people gathered around the burned beaten bodies still hanging from the trees.  The white people seemed eager to be photographed gawking at the bodies and looking smiling into the cameras.  Even small children were brought to view the bodies.   Photographs of the crowds standing proudly around the hanging bodies were printed on front pages in the 1914s through the 1964.

Today’s headlines New York Times headlines include the “Me To Movement” the NFL’s controversy over black players sitting during the national anthem and articles on the Police shooting minorities during routine traffic stops. To me this movie is as relevant to our lives today as the day it was released.  As an American society we need to see each other as people like Atticus Finch does in the movie.  Not with fear because we are different racial, gender or social groups.