To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, Universal, dir. Robert Mulligan, based on novel by Harper Lee, 129 min) is a “shot flat” black and white movie classic, perfect in its abstraction. Gregory Peck plays Atticus Finch as a progressively-minded lawyer defending a black man Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) against a false charge or raping a white woman. There is a great courtroom drama scream: “He took advantage of me!” (But He didn’t.)
The story is told through his precocious tomboy daughter Scout (Mary Badham); the Alabama townspeople also show their prejudice against a white Asperger’s-like recluse Boo Radley (Robert Duvall), who is rumored to be a boogeyman, particularly around Halloween. That makes Scout pretty much a protagonist, with Tom turning into a second protagonist. The novel is popular with high school English and social studies teachers.
Surprisingly there has been some backlash against the novel and book recently, as presenting blacks in segregated America as helpless.
In 2015 Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman" was published, and it is viewed as a first draft for the famous novel.