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Ranked 34 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest American Films, To Kill a Mockingbird is quite simply one of the finest family-oriented dramas ever made. A beautiful and deeply affecting adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, the film retains a timeless quality that transcends its historically dated subject matter (racism in the Depression-era South) and remains powerfully resonant in present-day America with its advocacy of tolerance, justice, integrity, and loving, responsible parenthood. It's tempting to call this an important "message" movie that should be required viewing for children and adults alike, but this riveting courtroom drama is anything but stodgy or pedantic. As Atticus Finch, the small-town Alabama lawyer and widower father of two, Gregory Peck gives one of his finest performances with his impassioned defense of a black man (Brock Peters) wrongfully accused of the rape and assault of a young white woman. While his children, Scout (Mary Badham) and Jem (Philip Alford), learn the realities of racial prejudice and irrational hatred, they also learn to overcome their fear of the unknown as personified by their mysterious, mostly unseen neighbor Boo Radley (Robert Duvall, in his brilliant, almost completely nonverbal screen debut). What emerges from this evocative, exquisitely filmed drama is a pure distillation of the themes of Harper Lee's enduring novel, a showcase for some of the finest American acting ever assembled in one film, and a rare quality of humanitarian artistry (including Horton Foote's splendid screenplay and Elmer Bernstein's outstanding score) that seems all but lost in the chaotic morass of modern cinema. --Jeff Shannon ... Read more

Reviews (220)

EVERYONE SHOULD SEE THIS MOVIE
Truman Capote's influence is felt everywhere in both the book and film versions of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, Harper Lee's classic, beautifully haunting story of childhood, innocence lost, and of the cruelty that exists in people everywhere. Yes, Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch, and all of the players here inhabit their roles with grace, humor and gravity, but it is Mary Badham as Scout who steals the show, as it should be. The simplicity of a father's touch, of a rapist's grimace, of the wind gently blowing through the trees at dusk -- everything in this movie evokes, from Scout's point of view, a time we each have in our lives that transforms us into adults. There comes with it an aching sadness -- as if saying goodbye to a comforting old friend -- but the revelation carries with it a profound joy. Elmer Bernstein's score realizes each emotional chord of the film, and transports us without ever lambasting us -- it is the best kind of movie score. You will be hooked from the opening credits, which are creatively brilliant -- those crayons, the haunting and beguiling theme softly begins on the piano -- through to the closing credits, at which point there will be well-earned tears softly falling down your cheek.

The Summer We Discovered Life
Every so often, as surely as night follows day, a film comes along that manages to transport us from our everyday lives and into a time and place that is recalled through memories of better and in a reversal of fortunes, turbulent times. To Kill A Mockingbird is such a film.

In a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Harper Lee, the small town of Macomb, Alabama is portrayed in the summer of 1932, during the deepest depression that the United States had ever experienced. Over the course of the next year and a half, events will burrow inside this sleepy southern town and the lives of its residents will be transported by actions, ideas, perceptions and convictions that will influence one and all in ways that will ring true for years to come.

Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a lawyer and widower, raising two small children, Scout (Mary Badham) and her older brother Jem (Phillip Alford). Into their lives enters a visitor, Dill (John Megna) from Meridian, Mississippi, come to spend two weeks with his Aunt Stephanie (Alice Ghostley). Macomb is a town with nothing to do and if there were, no money to spend on it. The stage is being set for a life shattering episode that will not go quietly into that good night.

Childhood holds its fascinations, its myths, its coming of age and through the eyes of the three children, the audience is allowed to peer into the adult world around them as perceived through the minds and souls of innocence that will be all too easily shattered as time whistles down the track. One of the stories woven so masterfully within its covers is the local urban legend of bogeyman, Boo Radley (Robert Duval), who lives on the same block as the Finch family. In a narration, rather like playing telephone, his persona takes on all the familiar attributes of a raving lunatic, a monster out for blood. His aura becomes the end all for Scout, Jem and Dill as they seek to master the mystery surrounding Boo and the ability to live to tell the tale!

Into this world of innocence, a shattering crescendo of complexity wraps itself in the lives of the townspeople in the form of an alleged rape of a white woman, Mayella Violet Ewell (Collin Wilcox) by a black man, Tom Robinson (Brock Peters). Atticus Finch is called upon to act as counsel for Robinson and in doing so, the stage has been set for a dance with race relations and the exemplary lengths that are gone to in order to allow justice to prevail in the face of malcontent.

The performances throughout To Kill A Mockingbird are stunning. Gregory Peck, as the gentleman lawyer, mired in small town attitudes and thoughts that were so representational in the southern gothic sphere, has collected and held a restrained order to his character, and in the process, he has allowed us all to be on the receiving end of hate as conveyed through the actions of small minds and small people. The children, especially Mary Badham, are siblings of more than a movie making venture. They show the absence of preconceived notions, and the guile of beings before the actions of adults can render their world as lost and gone with the shedding of time.

James Anderson as Tom Ewell is the complete representation of oily slime as Mayella's father. He embodies all of the hate and prejudice that continues to be harboured to this day in the souls of those who would attempt to wield their vision of the way things should and ought to be. He has a foul baseness that lingers like a bad rash as he attempts to invoke his arguments through drunken bullying and hatred. Collin Willcox as Mayella is excruciatingly convincing as the bored, housebound white woman who tries to tempt Tom Robinson into kissing her and through her actions sets in motion a rollercoaster of tragedy to come. Her speech to the assembled courtroom is superb and as the audience, you feel her anger and resentment at having to be put in such a position, having to lie to save face and what little position she has in the town. Brock Peters as the aforementioned Robinson is equally sure in the allotted time he spends on the screen. There is a noble demeanor to his bearing, and yet we are aware of the restrictions that blacks were held to in their relationships with whites at the time.

Robert Mulligan, the director and Horton Foote, the screenwriter, have presented us with a look into our pasts and faithfully etched a portrait of quiet and artfully rendered proportions that draw us into the canvas and the lives of those assembled. We have walked a mile in their shoes and been under their skin. Foote worried about being able to do justice to Lee's novel, but he worried for nothing. He has completely evoked an era that now rests behind clouds of dust, blown by the winds of time into oblivion.

The cinematography by Russell Harlan and the set decoration by Oliver Emert carry us back through the courtesy of black and white to a depiction seen only in old photographs and clouding memories of those who lived in those precarious times. Black and white films seem to have had a curse thrust upon them by the younger generation today, as boring and tedious, but through the courtesies extended by Harlan and Emert, we are richer for those perceptions that would harken back throughout the pages of history.

Elmer Bernstein's film score carries us like an old friend and helps us to make our acquaintances with the characters held within this framework. He has achieved much with a simple theme and persuades us that said simplicity is fulfilled with less rather than more.

To Kill A Mockingbird is beautifully haunting and having been made in the 60's, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, it garners our attention to stop and take the time to truly 'see' what the human race is all about and what it can and should be, if taken over the bumps in the road and onto a path of sincere honesty and purpose. No special effects were needed, no huge Hollywood budget, no splashing of a story that had a happy ending for everyone involved. It is an open book into the realities of a world tilting temporarily off its axis, and being brought back on track through the goodness that sits in the hearts, minds and souls of mankind, if given half a chance.

See it and be amazed at what real moviemaking is all about.

Destruction of the innocent by the evils of the society
Destruction of the innocent by the evils of the society
Kuldip Kumar Garhwal

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but... sing their heart out for us. That's why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird." The movie 'To kill a mockingbird' depicts the destruction of the innocent by the evils of the society. Mockingbird is a symbol of innocence, characterized by Tom Robinson and Arthur Radley (Boo) where racial prejudice and ignorance are the symbol of evils in the society.

Tom Robinson, an African-American is accused by Mayela, a white woman, of sexual molestation. Atticus, a prominent lawyer of the town Maycomb, has proved that Tom Robinson is innocent but still the "all-white jury" convicts Robinson of the guilt. Tom Robinson, a "quite humble respectable Negro", becomes the victim of racial prejudice. Arthur Radley (Boo) has been emotionally destroyed by his father, as his father did not let him step outside the house. Boo is one of the "mockingbirds" in the story, who is the victim of ignorance; evil of the society which is trying to kill the good. Boo had a deep affection for children, which is later displayed in the story, when Boo saves Jim and Scout from Bob Ewells.

"There are some men in the world who are born to do unpleasant jobs for us; your father is one of them", said Maudie to Jim after his father (Atticus) lost the case of Tom Robinson. Atticus helped his children to learn values of life and he showed them how to live life by the values; preaching by practicing. Atticus allowed his children to call him by his name instead of 'father'. He wanted his children to explore freedom, but also taught them to stay in limits. Jim is brave, intelligent, and caring. He learns courage, dignity, and value of life from his father. He is transforming into adulthood.

Scout is still a kid; she does not know anything about the existence of evil in the society. She is learning about evils from the real life example of the victims (Tom and Boo) of the evils in the society. By the end of the story Scout's perspective on life develops from that of an innocent child into that of a near grown up. "Mr. Tate was right", said Scout to Atticus, after Mr. Tate, the town Sheriff explained Atticus indirectly that whatever Boo did was correct and he is not supposed to be punished for that. "It would be like shooting the mockingbird, wouldn't it." Scout shows a high level of ability to comprehend at the age of five, and understands the whole situation and judges what is right and what is wrong.

The Music Director of the movie has done an excellent job. Music plays an important role in the movie, by setting the mood for what is been screened. The movie starts with a musical note, which seems like it is played by a kid, one note at a time. The movie also has gothic music to create the horrifying or thrilling environment, when Jim and Scout were walking home after the Halloween Party and they had an encounter with Bob Ewells. Most of the places the movie has melancholy music to produce the feeling of thoughtful sadness. The pleasant arrangements of musical notes in the movie create an atmosphere where we feel that we are a part of the movie, and we go back into our nostalgic memories and look back into our childhood. The movie itself seems like a mockingbird song.

My favorite scene in the movie is when Atticus is walking out of the courtroom after the trial is over and all the "colored" people sitting in the balcony stands up to pay respect to Atticus, a white man, who tried his level best to save a "Negro." The Reverend says to Scout who was sitting, "Stand up Jean Louise. Your father is passing." The scene says it all, there is not much dialogue but the expressions on the faces of the black people was marvelous, with a slow melancholy music at the background. As it this situation there is nothing left to say, because everyone knows in the courtroom that Tom Robinson is not guilty but still the jury has convicted him of the rape, just because of racial prejudice.

_____________________________________________

Kuldip Kumar Garhwal(...)

To Kill a Mockingbird is like a sin
'To Kill A Mockingbird' is of course the movie adaptation of Harper Lee's movie with the same title. Gregory Peck is a lawyer in rural Mississippi who is asked to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman.

The movie starts however with a seemingly unrelated event, the lives of Atticus Finch's two children. His daughter is a tomboy and his son is trying to keep her from getting into more trouble. The stumble upon some strange items and look at the house of a strange man called Boo Radley.

Then the movie goes into the court case. It is of course very obvious that the black man is innocent, but this is 1930's South with an all white jury...

Then the two parts of the movie come back together again...

The acting in this movie (in black and white) is superb. I recall that Gregory Pecks perfomance was voted the best of the century. Even the little girl is superb, she even got a nominatation for an oscar. Boo Radley is played by Robert Duvall, though he says next to nothing and is only in the movie for a few minutes. He of course 10 years later would play Tom Hayden in The Godfather. For Star Trek fans: Tom Robinson, the black man accused, is Sisko's Father of DS9

Its children¿s world that evolves with racial prejudice
We shall say "To kill a mockingbird" is a classic of the century that unfolds reality into film with profound simplicity. Its character development along with the approach of realism supersedes many contemporary works of literature and film. The historic flavor of the film creates an impression of a southern community of America during the great depression. Apparently the quintessential theme of the movie is the social stigma and prejudice. We see conflicts between the blacks and whites in the same community where justice has upheld my one of the central character called atticus.

Tom Robinson, a black guy living in the same town called Mayconb was one of the central characters in the movie has been accused of raping a white woman. However, eventually he was convicted as guilty of charge and subjected to unfair justice system by the ignorant majority that have taken part in the jury. But there were other themes that also have significance to its crafts also. Its amazing reality of children's life that is so universal. It created a reality of vividing contention that helps the viewers to understand how the children see and think about the world. It also calls into attention of the activities that children by their vary nature involve in a family. For instance, Scout and Jem who are the central characters have enormous interests in scary yet joyful venture to Boo Radly's house even after being forbidden by their father. It was also important to observe how the children have collected gifts from the tree given by a isolated guy who they never been acquainted with.

The phenomenal curiosity of children is almost inescapable from the viewer's notice in the movie. They were inquisitive in every detail of what has been happening around them. That gives us the idea of their emotional reopens to the world and family relationships. As you will see, if you watch the movie, their father atticuls who has been a significant moral authority to them. He has great influence on how they develop the ideas of people and differences of good and evil that remain in their fantasy world.

The story of the movie has a unique way to tell you about a community and what is going on to its families. It takes us to the journey to reflect on our own childhood fantasy world and the adventures that still remains in our mind a thrill. ... Read more

Reviews (220)

EVERYONE SHOULD SEE THIS MOVIE
Truman Capote's influence is felt everywhere in both the book and film versions of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, Harper Lee's classic, beautifully haunting story of childhood, innocence lost, and of the cruelty that exists in people everywhere. Yes, Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch, and all of the players here inhabit their roles with grace, humor and gravity, but it is Mary Badham as Scout who steals the show, as it should be. The simplicity of a father's touch, of a rapist's grimace, of the wind gently blowing through the trees at dusk -- everything in this movie evokes, from Scout's point of view, a time we each have in our lives that transforms us into adults. There comes with it an aching sadness -- as if saying goodbye to a comforting old friend -- but the revelation carries with it a profound joy. Elmer Bernstein's score realizes each emotional chord of the film, and transports us without ever lambasting us -- it is the best kind of movie score. You will be hooked from the opening credits, which are creatively brilliant -- those crayons, the haunting and beguiling theme softly begins on the piano -- through to the closing credits, at which point there will be well-earned tears softly falling down your cheek.

The Summer We Discovered Life
Every so often, as surely as night follows day, a film comes along that manages to transport us from our everyday lives and into a time and place that is recalled through memories of better and in a reversal of fortunes, turbulent times. To Kill A Mockingbird is such a film.

In a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Harper Lee, the small town of Macomb, Alabama is portrayed in the summer of 1932, during the deepest depression that the United States had ever experienced. Over the course of the next year and a half, events will burrow inside this sleepy southern town and the lives of its residents will be transported by actions, ideas, perceptions and convictions that will influence one and all in ways that will ring true for years to come.

Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a lawyer and widower, raising two small children, Scout (Mary Badham) and her older brother Jem (Phillip Alford). Into their lives enters a visitor, Dill (John Megna) from Meridian, Mississippi, come to spend two weeks with his Aunt Stephanie (Alice Ghostley). Macomb is a town with nothing to do and if there were, no money to spend on it. The stage is being set for a life shattering episode that will not go quietly into that good night.

Childhood holds its fascinations, its myths, its coming of age and through the eyes of the three children, the audience is allowed to peer into the adult world around them as perceived through the minds and souls of innocence that will be all too easily shattered as time whistles down the track. One of the stories woven so masterfully within its covers is the local urban legend of bogeyman, Boo Radley (Robert Duval), who lives on the same block as the Finch family. In a narration, rather like playing telephone, his persona takes on all the familiar attributes of a raving lunatic, a monster out for blood. His aura becomes the end all for Scout, Jem and Dill as they seek to master the mystery surrounding Boo and the ability to live to tell the tale!

Into this world of innocence, a shattering crescendo of complexity wraps itself in the lives of the townspeople in the form of an alleged rape of a white woman, Mayella Violet Ewell (Collin Wilcox) by a black man, Tom Robinson (Brock Peters). Atticus Finch is called upon to act as counsel for Robinson and in doing so, the stage has been set for a dance with race relations and the exemplary lengths that are gone to in order to allow justice to prevail in the face of malcontent.

The performances throughout To Kill A Mockingbird are stunning. Gregory Peck, as the gentleman lawyer, mired in small town attitudes and thoughts that were so representational in the southern gothic sphere, has collected and held a restrained order to his character, and in the process, he has allowed us all to be on the receiving end of hate as conveyed through the actions of small minds and small people. The children, especially Mary Badham, are siblings of more than a movie making venture. They show the absence of preconceived notions, and the guile of beings before the actions of adults can render their world as lost and gone with the shedding of time.

James Anderson as Tom Ewell is the complete representation of oily slime as Mayella's father. He embodies all of the hate and prejudice that continues to be harboured to this day in the souls of those who would attempt to wield their vision of the way things should and ought to be. He has a foul baseness that lingers like a bad rash as he attempts to invoke his arguments through drunken bullying and hatred. Collin Willcox as Mayella is excruciatingly convincing as the bored, housebound white woman who tries to tempt Tom Robinson into kissing her and through her actions sets in motion a rollercoaster of tragedy to come. Her speech to the assembled courtroom is superb and as the audience, you feel her anger and resentment at having to be put in such a position, having to lie to save face and what little position she has in the town. Brock Peters as the aforementioned Robinson is equally sure in the allotted time he spends on the screen. There is a noble demeanor to his bearing, and yet we are aware of the restrictions that blacks were held to in their relationships with whites at the time.

Robert Mulligan, the director and Horton Foote, the screenwriter, have presented us with a look into our pasts and faithfully etched a portrait of quiet and artfully rendered proportions that draw us into the canvas and the lives of those assembled. We have walked a mile in their shoes and been under their skin. Foote worried about being able to do justice to Lee's novel, but he worried for nothing. He has completely evoked an era that now rests behind clouds of dust, blown by the winds of time into oblivion.

The cinematography by Russell Harlan and the set decoration by Oliver Emert carry us back through the courtesy of black and white to a depiction seen only in old photographs and clouding memories of those who lived in those precarious times. Black and white films seem to have had a curse thrust upon them by the younger generation today, as boring and tedious, but through the courtesies extended by Harlan and Emert, we are richer for those perceptions that would harken back throughout the pages of history.

Elmer Bernstein's film score carries us like an old friend and helps us to make our acquaintances with the characters held within this framework. He has achieved much with a simple theme and persuades us that said simplicity is fulfilled with less rather than more.

To Kill A Mockingbird is beautifully haunting and having been made in the 60's, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, it garners our attention to stop and take the time to truly 'see' what the human race is all about and what it can and should be, if taken over the bumps in the road and onto a path of sincere honesty and purpose. No special effects were needed, no huge Hollywood budget, no splashing of a story that had a happy ending for everyone involved. It is an open book into the realities of a world tilting temporarily off its axis, and being brought back on track through the goodness that sits in the hearts, minds and souls of mankind, if given half a chance.

See it and be amazed at what real moviemaking is all about.

Destruction of the innocent by the evils of the society
Destruction of the innocent by the evils of the society
Kuldip Kumar Garhwal

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but... sing their heart out for us. That's why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird." The movie 'To kill a mockingbird' depicts the destruction of the innocent by the evils of the society. Mockingbird is a symbol of innocence, characterized by Tom Robinson and Arthur Radley (Boo) where racial prejudice and ignorance are the symbol of evils in the society.

Tom Robinson, an African-American is accused by Mayela, a white woman, of sexual molestation. Atticus, a prominent lawyer of the town Maycomb, has proved that Tom Robinson is innocent but still the "all-white jury" convicts Robinson of the guilt. Tom Robinson, a "quite humble respectable Negro", becomes the victim of racial prejudice. Arthur Radley (Boo) has been emotionally destroyed by his father, as his father did not let him step outside the house. Boo is one of the "mockingbirds" in the story, who is the victim of ignorance; evil of the society which is trying to kill the good. Boo had a deep affection for children, which is later displayed in the story, when Boo saves Jim and Scout from Bob Ewells.

"There are some men in the world who are born to do unpleasant jobs for us; your father is one of them", said Maudie to Jim after his father (Atticus) lost the case of Tom Robinson. Atticus helped his children to learn values of life and he showed them how to live life by the values; preaching by practicing. Atticus allowed his children to call him by his name instead of 'father'. He wanted his children to explore freedom, but also taught them to stay in limits. Jim is brave, intelligent, and caring. He learns courage, dignity, and value of life from his father. He is transforming into adulthood.

Scout is still a kid; she does not know anything about the existence of evil in the society. She is learning about evils from the real life example of the victims (Tom and Boo) of the evils in the society. By the end of the story Scout's perspective on life develops from that of an innocent child into that of a near grown up. "Mr. Tate was right", said Scout to Atticus, after Mr. Tate, the town Sheriff explained Atticus indirectly that whatever Boo did was correct and he is not supposed to be punished for that. "It would be like shooting the mockingbird, wouldn't it." Scout shows a high level of ability to comprehend at the age of five, and understands the whole situation and judges what is right and what is wrong.

The Music Director of the movie has done an excellent job. Music plays an important role in the movie, by setting the mood for what is been screened. The movie starts with a musical note, which seems like it is played by a kid, one note at a time. The movie also has gothic music to create the horrifying or thrilling environment, when Jim and Scout were walking home after the Halloween Party and they had an encounter with Bob Ewells. Most of the places the movie has melancholy music to produce the feeling of thoughtful sadness. The pleasant arrangements of musical notes in the movie create an atmosphere where we feel that we are a part of the movie, and we go back into our nostalgic memories and look back into our childhood. The movie itself seems like a mockingbird song.

My favorite scene in the movie is when Atticus is walking out of the courtroom after the trial is over and all the "colored" people sitting in the balcony stands up to pay respect to Atticus, a white man, who tried his level best to save a "Negro." The Reverend says to Scout who was sitting, "Stand up Jean Louise. Your father is passing." The scene says it all, there is not much dialogue but the expressions on the faces of the black people was marvelous, with a slow melancholy music at the background. As it this situation there is nothing left to say, because everyone knows in the courtroom that Tom Robinson is not guilty but still the jury has convicted him of the rape, just because of racial prejudice.

_____________________________________________

Kuldip Kumar Garhwal(...)

To Kill a Mockingbird is like a sin
'To Kill A Mockingbird' is of course the movie adaptation of Harper Lee's movie with the same title. Gregory Peck is a lawyer in rural Mississippi who is asked to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman.

The movie starts however with a seemingly unrelated event, the lives of Atticus Finch's two children. His daughter is a tomboy and his son is trying to keep her from getting into more trouble. The stumble upon some strange items and look at the house of a strange man called Boo Radley.

Then the movie goes into the court case. It is of course very obvious that the black man is innocent, but this is 1930's South with an all white jury...

Then the two parts of the movie come back together again...

The acting in this movie (in black and white) is superb. I recall that Gregory Pecks perfomance was voted the best of the century. Even the little girl is superb, she even got a nominatation for an oscar. Boo Radley is played by Robert Duvall, though he says next to nothing and is only in the movie for a few minutes. He of course 10 years later would play Tom Hayden in The Godfather. For Star Trek fans: Tom Robinson, the black man accused, is Sisko's Father of DS9

Its children¿s world that evolves with racial prejudice
We shall say "To kill a mockingbird" is a classic of the century that unfolds reality into film with profound simplicity. Its character development along with the approach of realism supersedes many contemporary works of literature and film. The historic flavor of the film creates an impression of a southern community of America during the great depression. Apparently the quintessential theme of the movie is the social stigma and prejudice. We see conflicts between the blacks and whites in the same community where justice has upheld my one of the central character called atticus.

Tom Robinson, a black guy living in the same town called Mayconb was one of the central characters in the movie has been accused of raping a white woman. However, eventually he was convicted as guilty of charge and subjected to unfair justice system by the ignorant majority that have taken part in the jury. But there were other themes that also have significance to its crafts also. Its amazing reality of children's life that is so universal. It created a reality of vividing contention that helps the viewers to understand how the children see and think about the world. It also calls into attention of the activities that children by their vary nature involve in a family. For instance, Scout and Jem who are the central characters have enormous interests in scary yet joyful venture to Boo Radly's house even after being forbidden by their father. It was also important to observe how the children have collected gifts from the tree given by a isolated guy who they never been acquainted with.

The phenomenal curiosity of children is almost inescapable from the viewer's notice in the movie. They were inquisitive in every detail of what has been happening around them. That gives us the idea of their emotional reopens to the world and family relationships. As you will see, if you watch the movie, their father atticuls who has been a significant moral authority to them. He has great influence on how they develop the ideas of people and differences of good and evil that remain in their fantasy world.

The story of the movie has a unique way to tell you about a community and what is going on to its families. It takes us to the journey to reflect on our own childhood fantasy world and the adventures that still remains in our mind a thrill. ... Read more

Reviews (38)

A Southern Gothic Treat
How could a movie fanatic go wrong with this one? Sidney Pollack directing, with Francis Ford Coppola helping out with the adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play? A great cast , with especially memorable performances from Natalie Wood, Kate Reid and Mary Badham (as younger sister, Willie Starr)? Roberts Redford and Blake and Charles Bronson thrown in for lagniappe? Sounds like great gumbo to me.

Natalie Wood is absolutely alluring in this one. She and Redford, who also teamed together in the memorable INSIDE DAISY CLOVER, did indeed appear to have a lot of screen chemistry. He is the cynical company man who appears like the Grim Reaper in a small, shabby, depression-era southern town, carrying pink slips with him, instead of a scythe. The role has a lot of resonance now, what with all the corporate downsizing currently going on. Needless to say, the townfolk don't much cotton to Mr Owen Legate, with his fancy suit and self-assured ways.

With a couple notable exceptions. Tom boyish Willie Starr is taken by him right away and the minute her big sister Alma sets eyes on him, she's putty. Wood's expression in that initial glance is part of film history.

Owen further antagonizes the townfolk because they see that Alma has taken a shine to an outsider. Alma's been something of a tramp up this point, givining it up to varying degrees to most of the men in the town. Several of them, including an old geezer with an invilid wife, have been fantazising about further adventures with Alma. And Alma's mother is upset with Owen, because she sees that he is going to take away her gravy train. Hazel Starr is one of Williams' great eccentric female characters, and perhaps his most unctuous (though Amanda Wingfield, in THE GLASS MENAGERIE, is no prize, either. Kate Reid is perfect in the role. This, to me is her most memorable performance, followed closely by her title role in AND MISS REARDON DRINKS A LITTLE, which unfortunatley appears to be impossible to find. It's hard to believe she never won an Oscar or a Tony.

This was only the second feature film that Pollock directed. He of course went on to great things with such films as THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY and TOOTSIE. He and Cinematographer James Wong Howe do a great job of capturing small southern town lethargy, as well as 30's New Orleans ambience. The print, unfortunately, could definitely use a full restoration. It's faded noticeably over time. The film certainly warrants the extra work. Yet time cannot wither Natalie Wood. She's still one of the most lovely women a camera ever made love to. This film definitely belongs near the top of the list for screen adaptations of Williams' plays.

BEK

Perfect but tragic
I feel that calling this movie tragic gives away too much of the plot. But (sigh) I did it. This film was not to me sulty, sexy or smoldering, and it lacked the scented decadence that I've come to associate with a Tennessee Williams play. (He was a hero of mine in high school.) However, Williams didn't write this screenplay, though it's from a shorter work of his. It was a wonderful movie, everyone acted it to the hilt. Redford was great, and had his usual inflections and mannerisms. Wood covered all the emotions exactly, from nervous anxiety at the start, though joy, grief and horror, indignant rage, dreamy fantasizing, the works. I thought she deserved an Oscar. The flick also had a very young shy Robert Blake in it. I never hated a character so much in my movie-going life as I did Kate Reid, Wood's mother in the movie. Shoot anyone who tells you how it ends, then watch it anyway (if this sort of thing is your sort of thing).

So Much Talent
Natalie Wood just never seemed to get a break. For an actress with an obvious talent, one that can usually carry a picture, her later career seems saddled with pictures that could have been good yet just do not come off. An excellent example is This Property is Condemned. Just a glance at the credits will convince you that the result of so many talents, (Tennessee Williams, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, Kate Reid, Francis Coppola, John Houseman, Ray Stark, James Wong Howe), the picture has got to be a classic. Unfortunately, this is far from the case. The result of so much talent ends up a mishmash of patched together themes, uneven editing and reactions that do not fit the characters. One problem is the fleshing out of the original one act play, pulling in additional material that does not seem to match the first half of the film. Laden with long drawn out pans of Wood wandering New Orleans, the movie stumbles to a clumsy ending made only worse by the "let's take care of all those loose ends" epilogue with Mary Badham as Wood's younger sister. What could have been a taut and emotionally devastating film results instead with the viewer wondering how could so many great talents create something so flat and lifeless? Natalie Wood however is wonderful and a joy to watch and makes the best of the poor script handed her. Equally good is Mary Badham, a special treat to watch in what I believe is the only film she made other than her amazing turn as Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird. If I had to pick just one thing that condemned the movie all together-the music. Some of the sappiest and inappropriate background soundtrack I have ever heard in my life. When the film cries out for a subtle dramatic score the viewer is presented instead with calliope tunes better suited for a circus themed comedy.

Wish me a rainbow, wish me a star ...
A year after Tennessee Williams's 1945 breakthrough success with "The Glass Menagerie," a collection of his then-existing one-act plays was published under the title "27 Wagons Full of Cotton." Included in that collection was "This Property Is Condemned," a two-person play describing a chance encounter between a boy named Tom and an orphaned school drop-out named Willie by the railroad tracks outside a near-abandoned, post-depression-era Southern town. During their conversation, Willie tells Tom about her sister Alva, who was once the town's "Main Attraction" with suitors galore, fancy clothes and always out to party; but died young when her lungs "got affected." Yet, everything about Willie already spells "doom" as well: Her dreaminess and lack of realism, her cheap rhinestone bracelet and raggedy old-fashioned party dress (which were once her sister's), her shabby doll, and of course the fact that she still lives in her family's old railroad-side boarding house, long-since shut down and bearing the sign "This Property Is Condemned," from which the story thus takes its symbolic title.

Inspired by Tennessee Williams's play, Francis Ford Coppola sat down with TV writer-producers Fred Coe and Edith Sommer (as well as uncredited David Rayfiel) and created a screenplay fleshing out the backstory; the story of Alva, who dreams of nothing more than getting out of her small backwater home town and seeing the world (or at least New Orleans, which is more or less the same thing), but is trapped between lack of money and prospects on the one hand and a mother heavily capitalizing on her physical attractions on the other hand. And both the screenwriters and Natalie Wood, who stars as Alva, did the famous playwright proud: Their heroine is as much an inhabitant of Williams's "Dragon Country" - that place too painful to live in, yet somehow endured - as are her sisters-in-spirit Blanche DuBois ("A Streetcar Named Desire") and Amanda and Laura Wingfield ("The Glass Menagerie"); like them hiding from a reality deemed intolerable behind a gauze veil of make-believe, and prone to immediate destruction when robbed of her illusions.

For Alva, however, doom doesn't come at the hands of a man: In fact, although she has acquired the reputation of the town's easiest girl, with suitors ranging from her own mother's boyfriend (a marvelously, tightly controlled Charles Bronson) to a wealthy old visitor from Memphis named Johnson (John Harding), railroad executive Owen Legate (Robert Redford), in town with a suitcase full of pink slips and thus the quickly-maligned catalyst of the railroad-dependent community's demise, falls for her when he begins to see through her easygoing facade. (She, of course, was smitten the minute she laid eyes on him ... and sister, I sure am with you there. We're talking about Redford in his prime, after all.) Owen and Alva are a classic case of "opposites attract" - he the realist who never dreams, dislikes his job but does it because someone has to, and tries to make her face the reality of her situation, albeit with the aim of empowering, not destroying her; and she the romantic, who can dream herself inside a snow globe when she wants to feel cold, believes that places vividly imagined are almost as good as places actually visited, and sometimes feels so suffocated by her town's encroaching atmosphere that she has physical trouble breathing (which of course also foreshadows other things). Natalie Wood and Robert Redford have incredible chemistry - their prior collaboration in "Inside Daisy Clover" quite obviously helped a lot - and truly bring to life the precarious, only seemingly carefree young Southern belle and her reluctant lover. But just as crucial is the relationship between Alva and her manipulative mother (Kate Reid), who stands for everything that her daughter is not and, although practically inexistent in Tennessee Williams's play, as an agent of destruction is a worthy peer to his most brutal characters, first and foremost "Streetcar"'s Stanley Kowalski.

While it can hardly be said that the movie is "based" on Tennessee Williams's play - the opening credits aptly use the term "suggested by" - the play itself remains largely intact as an outer frame; using Willie (Mary Badham of "To Kill a Mockingbird" fame) as a narrator and taking the majority of the dialogue between her and Tom ("Lassie"'s Jon Provost) straight from the play. Much the same is true for the Starr boarding house, which in the movie's opening and closing shots quite closely matches Tennessee Williams's (as always) elaborate stage directions, describing the building as "a large yellow frame house which has a look of tragic vacancy:" only one example of James Wong Howe's and Stephen Grimes's excellent cinematography and production design, complimented in turn by the great, venerable Edith Head's period-sensitive costumes.

For most of the movie's participants, "This Property Is Condemned" was a harbinger of even bigger things to come: Although Natalie Wood was a bona-fide star (and the only actor receiving "above the line" billing) and both child actors' parts did not come close to the earlier ones that had made them famous, Francis Ford Coppola was yet to create "The Godfather," Sydney Pollack would go on to direct the much-acclaimed "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?," Robert Redford's career would skyrocket with "Butch and Sundance," and for Pollack and Redford together this was only the first in a seven-film run, including blockbusters like "The Way We Were" and "Three Days of the Condor" and culminating in 1985's multiple-award-winning "Out of Africa." Thus, this is also an important testament to the level of work that facilitated their respective paths to glory. Conversely, in Natalie Wood's case this was probably her last truly great appearance, unmatched by any of her remaining work in the 15 years until her untimely death. For everybody involved, however, it was an important career milestone - and with its spot-on atmosphere, fine acting and all-around great production values it's a movie I'll take over many a more recent release any time; no questions asked.

This Property is Condemned
I was very disappointed by this movie. The only redeeming thing about it was Robert Redford and he couldnt even save this movie. First of all if you are looking for an uplifting movie with a happy ending, this one is not for you. Natalie Wood is gorgeous but I found her character to be so slutty that I did not like her at all and did not find her worthy of Robert Redfords character. All in all, I would suggest to Robert Redford fans to stick with some of his other great movies like Barefoot in the Park and The Way We Were-you can never go wrong with those movies, they are truly timeless. ... Read more