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| Gregory
Peck, Mary Badham, Philip Alford, Robert Duvall, Brock
Peters |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Atticus Finch
(Gregory Peck): There's
a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em
all away from you. That's never possible.
Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the Depression-era
South, defends a black man against an undeserved rape charge and
his kids against prejudice.
 Seminal
enough to inform every racially charged small-town Southern Gothic
drama since, To Kill a Mockingbird still remains something
of an oddity in Hollywood history: a coming-of-age story that resists
most forms of maudlin sentimentality, a courtroom drama in which
the dramatic climax takes place outside the courthouse, and a race
relations story that is realistic without being unremittingly bleak
(and which is at least moderately patronizing to its
black characters).
The key to the film's success, as is demonstrated by the supplementary
material, lies in Horton Foote's delicately structured screenplay
and its fidelity to Harper Lee's novel. Through their inexhaustible
dedication to the material, the cast and crew even managed to transform
the Universal backlot into an absolutely convincing Depression-era
southern town populated by believable supporting characters rather
than the usual stock group of character actors. Add to this Gregory
Peck in the role he was simply born to play and two of the most
memorable child performances in American film history, and the
result is one of the great works of literary adaptation. |
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Previously available in a non-anamoprhic
collector's edition for Region 1 and 2, To Kill a Mockingbird has
now been re-released on DVD for Region 1 as a handsomely
packaged two-disc release in Universal's new Legacy Series.
The double-disc release served as the basis for this review.
The anamorphic widescreen
image is framed at an aspect ratio of approx. 1.85:1. A
considerable improvement over the non-anamorphic previous
DVD edition, this new hi-def transfer has been cleaned up
considerably and has been mastered with attention to detail,
its moments of strong grain the natural and undistracting
result of occasional optical zooms and other post-production
film processes.
Two new 5.1-channel remixes are on board this new edition
(the DTS option hardly distinguishable from its Dolby Digital
counterpart), and both offer subtle, beautifully mixed and
surprisingly high-fidelity renditions of the original mono
track (which is also available for purists and completists).
 The
only entry in Universal's new Legacy Series editions to truly
live up to the promise of this collection's attractive 'Little
Golden Book' packaging, To Kill a Mockingbird carries
a terrific load of value-added content. This starts off
with the excellent commentary track from director Robert
Mulligan and produced Alan J. Pakula, which has been recycled
from the older DVD. It offers an abundance of information,
engagingly recounted by two animated, highly involved speakers.
Much of this information resurfaces in slightly different
form in the outstanding 90-minute documentary 'Fearful Symmetry',
another useful holdover from the previous release. New on
disc two is an hour-long retrospective look at Gregory Peck's
career, in which this film claims a special position. Shorter
items to be found on disc one include bits and pieces such
as Gregory Peck's Academy Award acceptance speech, his American
Film Institute Life Achievement Award, an excerpt from the
Academy's tribute to Gregory Peck, and "Scout Remembers" – a
1999 NBC news interview with Mary Badham. The remaining
supplement besides the trailer consists of a gorgeous set
of eleven postcard-sized reproductions of various international
posters (of such high quality that this reviewer has gone
so far as to frame them).
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
September 19, 2005
Click
here for IMDB info on To
Kill a Mockingbird .
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