Behold A Pale Horse (1964)

There is an unforgettable moment in Behold A Pale Horse when Fred Zinnemann brings two of Hollywood’s greatest action stars together at last, in an unforgettable sequence of unrelenting tension. We see Omar Sharif, dressed in a black priest’s robe, walking peacefully down a road in the French countryside when a car suddenly pulls up beside him, and Gregory Peck steps out. Angry and impatient, he grabs Sharif by the arm.

“Get in, priest!” he growls.

“Beg your pardon?” Sharif asks, confused.

“I said GET IN, PRIEST!” Peck roars.

He shoves Sharif into the car with two other people, interrogates him, mocks him and—at one unexpected moment—smacks him hard across the face. Up until now, we haven't been too involved in the movie. But now Peck and Sharif have finally been brought together, and suddenly we're drawn in.

A $3.9 million movie headed by a strong director with an impeccable cast, Behold A Pale Horse was a notorious box office flop in the summer of 1964, grossing a mere $900,000 and embarrassing Columbia Pictures’ reputation in international cinemas overseas. The movie, a political thriller about the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, was made at a time when Franco was still in power in Spain; the Spanish government was reportedly so offended by the film’s subject matter that Columbia was even forced to sell its Spanish distribution business. Advertised as a reunion between Peck and Anthony Quinn after The Guns of Navarone (1961), and also as a reunion between Quinn and Sharif after Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Behold A Pale Horse promised audiences an action-packed Hollywood vehicle and gave them, instead, a moody, meditative morality play.

If Behold A Pale Horse has been all but forgotten today, it’s easy to see why. Shortly before his death in 1997, Fred Zinnemann admitted, “The film didn’t really come together… it was interesting, but it did not really feel right except in a few spots.” Zinnemann may have been ruminating over the film’s disappointing finale, in which Peck—portraying an aging Spanish assassin—walks out to San Martin for a final showdown with Anthony Quinn, who plays a military police captain. We expect Peck to kill Quinn at the end. Instead, Peck wastes his ammo on a former friend—a “traitor”—and dies in a hail of bullets, while Quinn walks off scot-free.

The movie's ending was not a happy one, but that's not the only reason why audiences didn't take a liking to it. The ending was bad for a variety of reasons. It offered no catharsis. It failed to deliver on the promise of the film's earlier, greater sequences. Most importantly, the dying actions of the protagonist were not in the least sympathetic. The Day of Jackal (1973), arguably Zinnemann's richest masterpiece, is another film that ends with the hero getting killed immediately after failing his mission, but at least in that film the hero has an excuse: he simply misses his target. The same cannot be said for Behold A Pale Horse, in which the hero fails not because of bad aiming, but because of his own stupidity; it doesn't make for very exciting cinema, nor does it do much in the way of inspiring intelligent critical perspectives. The film’s central question (why doesn’t Peck shoot Quinn at the end?) is not a very compelling one.

Watching Behold A Pale Horse today, I’ve found that the most compelling aspect of the film is the onscreen relationship between Peck and Sharif, both of whom are, in a sense, playing quintessential Zinnemann-type heroes in the film. Peck’s character, the Spanish bandit Manuel Artiguez, is a lone gunman plagued with feelings of self-doubt, much like Robert Ryan’s Joe Parkson in Act of Violence (1949) and Gary Cooper’s Will Kane in High Noon (1952). Sharif’s character, an innocent young priest named Father Francisco, is torn between following the customs of his church and doing what is right for his country. He might as well be a cousin to Audrey Hepburn’s Sister Luke in The Nun’s Story (1959). Whenever Peck and Sharif are onscreen, playing Artiguez and Francisco, respectively, they succeed in delivering material that is pure Fred Zinnemann. The other characters in the story—the ones played by Anthony Quinn, Marietto Angeletti, Paolo Stoppa and Raymond Pellegrin—are not nearly as interesting: they are bland, uninspired and two-dimensional, and they have no business being in a Zinnemann film.

Zinnemann’s decision to cast Gregory Peck as Artiguez (a role originally meant for Quinn) caused bitter sniping amongst critics at the time. They didn’t take too kindly to seeing Peck cast against type as a crotchety old Spanish mercenary. Richard Schickel complained in Life magazine, “What is needed is the internal stimulus of a powerful performance from Artiguez… what we have instead is gentle, attractive, intelligent Gregory Peck, an actor who sometimes smolders but is quite incapable of bursting into angry flame.”

It is possible that critics like Schickel were too accustomed to Peck’s image as Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) to imagine him playing tougher characters by that point in his career. While Peck might not have been the right ethnicity for Artiguez (the character was based on a real-life anti-Franco rebel named "Zapater"), he got everything else nailed down perfectly about the character: his laziness, his grumpiness, his method of viciously pulverizing all those who lie to him or stand in his way. Zinnemann, who in his autobiography praised Peck as having turned in a “riveting performance," was right to cast him.

Peck’s performance in the film is matched by the equally riveting performance of Omar Sharif, whom Zinnemann had met through David Lean at a screening of Lawrence of Arabia. Zinnemann thought Sharif was a “terrific” actor with “an enormous capability.” Many of the best scenes in Behold A Pale Horse depict Sharif, as Father Francisco, reflecting quietly on individual circumstances, choosing his words carefully and responding to arguments with effective counterarguments. Consider the scene in which Captain Vinolas (Anthony Quinn) captures Artiguez’ ailing mother (Mildred Dunnock), and then asks Francisco—who witnessed her death—to reveal her dying words to the police. Francisco refuses, warning Vinolas, “If you try to force me to tell you something my vows forbid me to tell, then you are also desecrating the church.” Or look at the scenes in which Francisco is accidentally separated from his party of priests during a trip to Pau, as he finds himself wandering helplessly in the menacing streets all around the French underworld. In each of these scenes, Sharif’s panic and desperation are essential in order for the audience to identify with him.

Both Artiguez and Francisco are suffering an unbearable crisis of conscience. Artiguez is afraid he’s grown too old to kill Vinolas. Francisco wants to warn Artiguez of the trap Vinolas is setting up for him in San Martin, but isn’t sure if doing so would violate the doctrines of his church. Zinnemann first attempts to bring the two characters together when Francisco stops by Artiguez’ apartment to deliver a letter, which—for complicated reasons—finds itself flushed down a toilet. Normally the delivery of a letter in a Zinnemann film means bad news: think the opening sequences of High Noon or A Man for All Seasons (1966). When Artiguez and Francisco finally do meet, however, it results in the film’s single-greatest sequence, in which they sit across from each other in Artiguez’ darkened apartment, breaking bread and exchanging religious disagreements. When Francisco, for example, brings up the subject of a brain-damaged priest (Jean-Paul Moulinot) who may have been assaulted by Artiguez during a bank robbery, Artiguez is unsympathetic: “Priests should stay out of banks!” A discussion about a neighborhood in Lorca, however, leads to smiles, a toast over wine and an area of mutual understanding.

Unfortunately, when Zinnemann is left with the other characters, he finds less dramatic ammunition. The character of Paco, a 10-year old boy who asks Artiguez to kill Vinolas for executing his father, is admirably portrayed by Marietto Angeletti, but harbors a burning desire for vengeance that he is too young to fully understand. The occasional father-son type rapport between Peck and Angletti, while amusing, has none of the depth that we got between Montgomery Clift and 9-year old Ivan Jandl in Zinnemann’s The Search (1948). Both Paolo Stoppa, as the bandit Pedro, and Raymond Pellegrin, as Carlos—Artiguez’ best friend who is secretly Vinolas’ mole—are left with thankless parts.

But the most disappointing character is far and away Anthony Quinn’s Captain Vinolas, a surprisingly boring villain. We see him romancing a mistress and lighting candles asking God to help him slay Artiguez, but that’s it as far as his psychological troubles go. Zinnemann also fails to draw striking parallels between Vinolas and Artiguez. You’d think Quinn and Peck would have a lot in common, but the most Zinnemann can do is make them both out to be incredibly salty, lecherous men who can’t seem to resist checking out a fine woman’s ass.

To be sure, it sounds like everyone had a lot of fun making the film. Anthony Quinn would often bring his newborn son onto the set to watch bull fights; Zinnemann described Quinn as "colorful", “cooperative”, “professional” and “very entertaining" on the set. Omar Sharif was thoroughly impressed with Zinnemann’s directorial technique, raving in the New York Herald Tribune about how he believed the director had “a marvelous rapport” with his actors (Sharif would later dismiss Behold A Pale Horse as one of many “bad movies by good directors” he made late in his career, long before his excellent comeback in 2003's Monsieur Ibrahim). Gregory Peck’s biographer, Gary Fishgall, reports that the actor considered the overall shoot to be “a marvelous experience”; he was allegedly so impressed with Zinnemann’s technique that he believed it to exceed even that of Hitchcock.

The film’s technical aspects have aged nicely. The score by Maurice Jarre, while not one of the composer’s most memorable efforts, makes chilling use of drums and isolated guitar chords. The black-and-white cinematography looks beautiful today, although Zinnemann hated working with DP Jean Badal, admitting, "On occasion, I had wish-dreams about putting a match to his beard." The film's story was adapted by J.P. Miller (scribe of Days and Wine and Roses) from the book Killing A Mouse On Sunday by the great Emeric Pressburger, although Zinnemann, fearing the title sounded too Disney-like, had it changed. The current title of the film, taken from the Book of Revelation, is just as misleading, although perhaps it makes for a more appropriate title for a political thriller.

And yet, despite the solid craftsmanship of the film, one thing has always kept Behold A Pale Horse from going down in history as the masterpiece it should have been: that damned ending. It stops the movie from taking off around the tracks, just when it’s gaining momentum.

Oh, it starts out well. Artiguez sneaks into San Martin, climbs up a rooftop, aims his sniper rifle and locates Vinolas in his sights. Then he takes aim… only to shoot Carlos instead. It’s a truly crummy anticlimax—although Zinnemann, at the time, went to great pains to defend it. “In my opinion,” he told reporters, “Manuel, when faced with the choice of killing a lifelong enemy or somebody who he considers a traitor, would kill the traitor. Perhaps in some way his enemy is an honorable adversary, but a traitor is like vermin.”

A valid defense, but Zinnemann ignored the central problem behind Artiguez’ decision: how selfish it is. By refusing to eliminate a totalitarian Spanish dictator, Artiguez is not only doing Vinolas a favor—he’s depriving the people of Spain of the democracy they won’t be getting for several more decades. His decision to shoot Carlos, instead of Vinolas, feels more inspired by stupidity than anything else.

One striking detail of the ending that is often overlooked, however, comes in the seconds just before Artiguez dies in a hail of bullets on a hospital staircase. As Zinnemann’s camera spins faster and faster around the hospital ward, the last image that pops into Artiguez’ head is the memory of young Paco kicking a soccer ball into the air. It seems like a random image, at first, but maybe it’s reminding Artiguez of a time when he was younger, and was happier—before he devoted himself to a life of crime.

In a sense, the movie is Zinnemann's most potent description of a man whose entire life has ended in failure. Manuel Artiguez had this one chance to eliminate a lifelong enemy, and he blew it. He had a grand opportunity to lead his country one step closer towards freedom, and he threw it away. Life as a bandit, it seems, has condemned him to one sorry disappointment after another. Consider that scene between him and Father Francisco, in Artiguez' darkened apartment. The young priest can do nothing more except stare in amazement at this tired, pathetic old man. “Go ahead, priest,” Artiguez raves, “tell me I’m a bandit!” And Father Francisco has a simple, five-word answer for him: “You know what you are.”

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962): Praise and Criticism for Robert Mulligan's Most Popular Film

“To begin with, this case should never have come to trial.” Atticus Finch begins his closing statement with these words, and from that point delivers a speech so true, so commanding, so universal, you would have to be a fool not to believe it. It is the single greatest courtroom speech in the history of American movies.

I don’t usually confess things like this, but here it is: To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) is the film that launched me into an obsession with classic movies. All of my love for the classic filmmakers of Hollywood begins with Robert Mulligan. I first saw the film at the age of fourteen, in the summer after my departure from middle school. High school was just around the corner. One day, at the Webster Groves library, I found a videotape of To Kill A Mockingbird for rental and took it home. I was familiar with it, mainly, because the AFI had voted Atticus Finch #1 in their list of the Top 50 Heroes in American cinema. Once the movie was over, I was so overjoyed, I was in tears. Then when I entered high school the following autumn, as a freshman, I read Harper Lee’s novel for the first time. Again, nothing but joy. There was absolutely no stopping my seemingly immortal and undying love for this extraordinary story.

But those years are long gone. I’ve seen far too many more movies and far too many superior movies—some of which, for that matter, were directed Robert Mulligan. Don’t get me wrong: I still love To Kill A Mockingbird. Truly, I do. But this is not a perfect film. Far from it. Nor is the original novel a flawless work. In my young teenage years, I regarded both Lee’s novel and Mulligan’s film to be without compare, finding no fault in either of them and often getting in extensive arguments with those who thought otherwise. But after watching the movie again recently, I’ve suddenly realized that for all of its messages about love, tolerance, anti-discrimination and nonviolence, To Kill A Mockingbird is also a story that inadvertently contradicts itself by endorsing hero worship, stereotypical antagonists and, most offensive of all, eye-for-an-eye justice. It is a story that is at once beautiful and hypocritical.

Matt Zoller Seitz, one of my favorite critics, shares my appreciation for To Kill A Mockingbird but is also quick to criticize the film where it is deserved. In a slideshow for Salon, Seitz writes, “My problem is the way this movie (and its source novel) make the heroes so pure, the villains so irredeemably craven and nasty, and the moral lessons so tidy. Atticus Finch is the nicest man who ever lived. Accused rapist Tom Robinson is innocent of all charges, including the implication that a black man could be turned on by the likes of his accuser, the gangly, shrewish, redneck slut Mayella Ewell. Mayella's dad, Bob Ewell--who beat Mayella and concocted the phony rape and battery charges to save face--is a racist pig, a step up from the hillbillies in Deliverance.”



The irony here, as Seitz observes, is that To Kill A Mockingbird reduces its heroes to archetypes and its villains to stereotypes even though it is a story written for the purpose of denouncing all archetypes and stereotypes in general. This is supposed to be a story about people who think the way they do for a reason, good people who sometimes do bad things, and flawed people who don’t know any better than what they have been taught since childhood. In his famous courtroom speech, Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) uses this sensible rhetoric when he speaks before the jury and tries to overcome their racism by dismissing two kinds of stereotypes: the idea that black men can’t be trusted around white women, and the idea that all poor white people are stupid, soulless and hopelessly bigoted.

Well, the movie certainly makes good on deconstructing that first stereotype. But To Kill A Mockingbird fails to make good on its second promise of illuminating on the poor white characters of the story as human beings. The one bigoted white character in all of To Kill A Mockingbird who can absolutely be described as three-dimensional is the farmer Walter Cunningham (Crahan Denton), who brings Atticus bags of hickory nuts every week as payment for legal work Atticus once did for him, but then finds himself morally conflicted when he leads a lynch mob against Atticus at the local jail, and is unsure whether to proceed. Perhaps in some ways a case can be made that the abused, frightened Mayella Ewell (Collin Wilcox) is a three-dimensional character, since she is a victim of incest, is confused by her sexual feelings and, as a consequence, puts another man’s life at stake after she does something that her society considers “unspeakable”. But no such complexities can be applied to her father, Bob Ewell (James Anderson), who as Seitz correctly writes, is never seen as anything more than an evil, racist pig. He has only purpose: to be the guy we’re supposed to hate.



Keep in mind that these problems in the movie’s characterizations are not just the fault of Horton Foote’s Academy Award-winning screenplay. This is exactly how Harper Lee wrote them in her novel. Foote’s job was only to adapt her pages; practically every intellectual concept that is present in Mulligan’s film is one of Lee’s own original concepts. Yet as Seitz explains, it is not only the antiheroes in To Kill A Mockingbird who are sort of drawn up stereotypically. Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), the black man Mayella has accused of rape, is so generous that he’s almost too generous. Even if he didn’t take advantage of Mayella, is it so hard to believe that he might have been somewhat aroused by her advances? In his defense, Tom does seem to be a man committed to family values: he has a wife (Kim Hamilton) who loves him, and a father (Jester Hairston) who worries about him. Maybe he’s also fully aware of what might happen if he got in any kind of scandal with a white girl. Still, when Tom is on the stand, he describes the incident as if he’s an adolescent boy who feels threatened by any kind of temptations of the flesh. Tom’s big scene is powerful, and the tearjerking performance by Brock Peters is something I’ve never forgotten—but there’s also that element of peculiar sexual logic it has going for it.

What about Atticus? Is he too archetypal? I can't say. I confess that I myself am probably not fully willing to slam the character. All of us have wished at some point or another that we could have had a father like Atticus Finch—and Harper Lee modeled the character off of her own dad—but Atticus Finch himself is such a larger-than-life character, he almost comes off as a tall tale. When the AFI voted him their #1 Hero, there’s a reason why he ended up beating Indiana Jones, James Bond and even George Bailey for that top spot: he’s a hero without error. Lee wrote him as an all-knowing wise man who knows what’s best for everybody. He believes in tolerance and nonviolence, even though he is not quite a full-fledged pacifist (he is not above putting a rapid dog out of its misery, and recognizes an act of "clear-cut, self-defense" at a key moment). Again, however, I’m not fully willing to slam Atticus as a character. I’ve always liked the way he is written.



Actually, parenting is a favorite theme in many of Robert Mulligan’s films. In Fear Strikes Out (1957), the father was a controlling man who pushed his son too hard—as opposed to Atticus Finch, who treats his children the way they ought to be treated. Inside Daisy Clover (1965) featured Ruth Gordon as a mother who loves her daughter but is powerless to save her from a viper’s nest of betrayals when she leaves home to become a movie star. The mother in Summer of ’42 (1971) is largely absent from the screen and totally oblivious to her teenage son’s sexual awakening, and the mother in The Other (1972) has gone mad. Alan Alda in Same Time, Next Year (1978) is distraught about his son’s death in Vietnam and decides to vote for Goldwater in hopes that he’ll drop the bomb. Sam Waterston in The Man in the Moon (1991) dotes on his daughters and, consequently, alternates between loving and hotheaded.



One thing I like about Atticus Finch is that he is not so foolish as to believe he is the only force of influence in his children's lives. A widower, he has hired Calpurnia (Estelle Evans) to serve as their mother figure, and cares not if the rest of the town objects to him running a multiracial household. He and Calpurnia both are aware that Jem and Scout's new friend Dill (John Megna), modeled off of Truman Capote, is a charlatan when he touts that he dad owns the L & R railroad--but he lets boys be boys. And he has a kind neighbor in Maudie Atkinson (Rosemary Murphy), one of the few people in town who understands that what Atticus is doing for Tom Robinson is right.



The most special thing about Atticus Finch is that he wants nothing more than for his children, Jem (Philip Alford) and Scout (Mary Badham), to grow up adopting his dogma of acceptance of others. Scout doesn’t understand why Atticus makes an effort to small-talk the cranky old Mrs. Dubose (Ruth White), and Jem can’t help but stare in confusion when Atticus resists getting into physical fights with Bob Ewell, especially when he molests the windows of Atticus’ car and, in a later scene, spits in his face. Atticus knew the day was coming when he’d have to explain these issues to his kids, and he has thoughtful answers for them. He explains to daughter, “if you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb inside of his skin, and walk around in it.” His talk with Jem is more disconcerting, but no less honest: “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep them all away from you. That’s never possible.”



Jem and Scout’s strong relationship with their father is, indeed, the heart of the picture, and one of the pleasures of To Kill A Mockingbird is seeing them attempt to adopt their father’s advice and become better human beings. Atticus has told Scout that if he were to refuse to defend Tom Robinson, he couldn’t hold his head up in town—he wouldn’t really be in a place to teach his kids how to distinguish between right and wrong. No doubt Atticus has given this same talk to Jem at one point or another, and both Jem and Scout practice following Atticus’ advice during the famous scene in which Walter Cunningham’s mob comes to the local jail, attempting to lynch Tom Robinson. Jem and Scout take matters into their own hands, and intervene: Scout’s sudden, innocent conversation with Cunningham shames the mob and lowers their guard. And Jem refuses to leave his father’s side. From a parent’s perspective, Atticus is doing the right thing when he orders his kids to go home; but Jem defies him, perhaps because he has realized that he could never hold up his head in town if he were to abandon his father to the mob and, quite possibly, watch him get hurt. Notice that, after the mob leaves, Atticus patiently asks the kids to go home, and then quietly pats Jem on the back, effectively recognizing his son’s courage. In this scene, Atticus, Jem and Scout all come away as heroes.

Roger Ebert criticizes this scene in his 2 ½-star review, claiming that it would never have happened this way in real life. I don’t agree with Ebert on this particular scene, although I will consent that the rest of Ebert’s complaints about To Kill A Mockingbird are valid. When I first read Ebert’s review as a young teenager, it outraged me. But reading it again, I can’t deny he has a point when he attacks the film’s more dubious scenes, which all follow Atticus’ courtroom speech: for example, after the racist jury finds Tom Robinson guilty, there are, strangely, no loud protests from the black crowd up on the balcony. The scene is written and directed in such a way so that the emphasis is put entirely on Atticus’ heroism for defending Tom, and hardly at all on the harsh realities of Tom’s fate.

Later, when it is revealed that Tom has been shot dead upon escaping from custody, Horton’s Foote’s screenplay veers into a most awful direction: it makes it look as though it was Tom’s own fault for running away from the police. In Harper Lee’s novel, the authorities shoot Tom seventeen times, clearly indicating that he was the victim of a racist shooting. Foote’s screenplay, however, omits this crucial detail, and changes the circumstances of Tom’s death to make him look like the guilty one instead. And Ebert also validly criticizes the scene in which Atticus breaks the bad news to the Robinson family, writing that “the black people in this scene are not treated as characters, but as props, and kept entirely in long shot. The close-ups are reserved for the white hero and villain.”



But I have not even gotten yet to the most offensive sequence in the film, one that both Harper Lee’s novel and Horton Foote’s screenplay share in common: the ending. On Halloween night, Jem and Scout, on their way home, take a shortcut through the woods, and are then attacked by a deranged Bob Ewell before the mysterious Boo Radley (Robert Duvall) puts Ewell’s cowardly actions to a stop, and kills him. I’m not going to lie: this ending makes me feel good. It makes me happy to know that Boo Radley turns out to be a nice guy after all, that he comes to the children’s rescue and that he rids the town of the vile man who caused an innocent black man’s death. And that is precisely what it is about the manipulative effect of this ending that disgusts me.

Harper Lee wrote this ending for a very obvious reason: she couldn’t bear to end her novel without killing off the villain. She and Horton Foote couldn’t end the story without making sure that the racist pig got his just desserts. They didn’t give a damn about Atticus Finch’s universal message of tolerance and nonviolence: they wanted eye-for-an-eye justice to prevail at the end of the story. They wanted to see a knife stuck up Bob Ewell’s ribs. I think this is nasty.



As Matt Zoller Seitz writes, “think about how Lee's universe contorts itself to ensure that the wicked are punished anyway (Halloween costume; knife), suggesting that there's a higher law that will eventually hold everyone accountable (a fine lesson if you're devout, but what if you're not?).” Just to add to Seitz’s criticisms, the reason why the ending of To Kill A Mockingbird rubs me the wrong way so much is because it’s such a clumsy way to conclude such an innovative story: the ending of To Kill A Mockingbird is formulaic, irrational, and even nihilistically sentimental. When Sheriff Heck Tate (Frank Overton) decides he’s going to cover up the incident and file a report stating that Ewell simply fell on his knife, it is not because Tate is concerned that all of Maycomb is going to be vulgarly celebrating Ewell’s death—it is because Tate is worried that Boo Radley will be overwhelmed by all the attention. Tate thinks this would be a “sin”, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Nor, for that matter, does Scout’s claim that Tate’s decision is “right”, or her comparison of Boo Radley to an innocent mockingbird. I agree more with Atticus, who looks at Scout quizzically when she makes this random comparison, asking her, “how do you mean?”

Did Mulligan and his longtime producer, Alan J. Pakula, recognize these as flaws in Foote’s screenplay? Not likely. I’m sure they were wholly committed to being as faithful in interpreting Lee’s pages as accurately as possible, for fear of aggravating unforgiving fans of the novel. In this sense they can only be lauded, as the film does remain one of the most faithful adaptations of a work of literature to date. Never mind the awkward turn of events in Lee and Foote’s dramatic structures, which happen mostly towards the end of the story and are never really explored.



In a nutshell, every single one of the later scenes following Atticus’ courtroom speech is flawed. That’s why I prefer, instead, to turn back to the courtroom speech itself, which has continued to stay with me to this day. “Now, gentlemen,” Atticus reminds the jury, “in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created… equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in our jury system. That’s no ideal to me—that is a living, working reality!” Atticus' code of honor is dutifully accepted by his peers in the courtroom: Judge Taylor (Paul Fix), to the credit of Lee and Foote, is not one of the more stereotypical characters in the story but, rather, a sensible man of the law who is clearly unhappy with the jury's final verdict, slamming the door on his way out. The prosecutor, Gilmer (William Windom), never objects to Atticus' questions to the witnesses, and vice versa. They all understand that they have jobs to do, and they have a trial to settle.



As for Atticus? He appears to be a man who has spent his entire life believing there is good in people, and has been thankful for it despite personal tragedies. No doubt the death of his wife has left a hole in his heart, and in one of Mulligan’s best-remembered shots in the film, we see Atticus sitting out on the front porch swing, listening solemnly to his sleepy children conversing about the memories of their deceased mother while he has his arm stretched outward onto the swing—around a wife who isn’t there. It's probably the most haunting shot in the film, and the only scene in the film where Atticus stops functioning as a mouthpiece for Lee and Foote's worldviews and disappears into ambiguity, reserving a quiet moment all for himself.



Now that I have looked more carefully at To Kill A Mockingbird—now that I have analyzed it extensively, shot-for-shot, line-for-line—I think I can finally bring myself to be at some kind of peace with it. As Robert Mulligan’s most popular work, it will continue to be a controversial film, and I may never cease to take issue with some of its most disconcerting narrative flaws. But what continues to live on, for me, is Atticus Finch’s complete determination to do what is right, even when the majority of the townspeople of Maycomb rally up against him. His last words to that unflinching jury get me every time: “In the name of God, do your duty. In the name of God… believe Tom Robinson.” I’m not a religious person, but even though Atticus’ attempts to save him are unsuccessful, I hope that Tom Robinson went to a better place. And I hope, for that matter, that Bob Ewell went to a better place, too. I hope with all my heart that wounds were healed and lives were restored in Maycomb County when Jem waked up in the morning.

The Yearling (1946)

Clarence Brown's The Yearling is an immortal film about a boy and his deer. It is also remembered as the film with the first real Gregory Peck performance. Before The Yearling, Peck had been sluggishly cast in films like Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) and King Vidor's Duel in the Sun (1946), and had yet to find a role suitable to his strongest capabilities as an actor. Though a favorite of producers like David O. Selznick, he was secretly loathed by filmmakers like Hitchcock and Vidor, who both learned--after directing him--that he wasn't meant for roles that were harsh or mysterious. “He's shallow, for one,” complained Francois Truffaut of Peck's Spellbound performance, “but the main thing is the lack of expression in his eyes.” That is true of Spellbound, but it is not true of The Yearling, in which Peck's eyes sparkle--and so do the eyes of the boy with the deer.

Based on the novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling offers what was perhaps the first tailor-made role of Peck's career. Peck plays Penny Baxter, a former Confederate soldier who has retired into Lake George, Florida, to cut away a home in the scrub country. The opening of The Yearling is delightfully lush, as Brown and his cinematographer, Charles Rosher, slowly move us across a calm, misty river at sunset- before taking the camera's point of view and moving head-first into the woods, over the scrub country and out into the Baxter farm. Peck's narration gives us an idea of just how far Penny Baxter has come to where he is now. He is an unusually nice man, a lover of nature, and less concerned about whatever is happening in industrial America on the outside.

But The Yearling is really about Penny's twelve-year old son, the adorable Jody (Claude Jarman, Jr.), who shares his father's appreciation of nature and who longs to claim one of the creatures of the forest as his own. The ten-year old son of a Nashville railroad accountant, Jarman gave what can safely be regarded as one of the greatest child performances of all time. Jarman, unlike Peck, had a lot of rich expression in his eyes, and it is a shame that- with the exception of a notable role in Ford’s Rio Grande (1950)- his career did not take off much after this film, despite winning the Academy Award for Outstanding Child Actor.

Jody thrives in what appears to be a fruitful childhood. On some days, he and his father will go off to hunt for “Old Slewfoot”, the notorious bear that stalks the backwoods; and on other days they will engage in town square fistfights with Lem Forrester (Forrest Tucker) and his gang of drunken rascals. Jody also has a friend his age, Fodderwing (Donn Gift), whom he envies because he owns scores of pets and even sleeps up in a tree house- although Jody doesn't quite know what to make of the fact that Fodderwing once tried to fly like a bird and ended up getting his legs broken. At home, Jody enjoys a friendly relationship with his father but is constantly scolded by his mother, Ora (Jane Wyman), who is bitter at having lost her other children to stillborn deaths. She is cold, but Penny wants to ease the relationship between mother and son. “Don't be afraid to love the boy, Ora”, he tells her with a hand on her knee, after she refuses to allow Jody to keep any pets in the house.

The first hour of The Yearling is devoted to Jody's daily life. It is only in the second hour when we finally arrive at the heart of the picture, when Jody takes advantage of a rare possibility: to find and bring home the orphaned fawn of a deer that Penny is forced to kill in order to stall a venomous snake bite. Feeling sympathy for the boy's desire for some responsibility in his life, Penny allows Jody to go find the fawn, and most everyone who hasn't seen the film is at least marginally familiar with the famous scene in which Jody finds a set of hoof prints in the sand, traces them to a set of plants, weaves them aside and then finds... the deer, nestled safely in a small clearing. Queue the heartwarming Herbert Stothart score. “It's me!” exclaims an overjoyed Jody at the sight of the fawn, whom he will later name Flag. “It's me- Jody!”

Let me stop myself so that I can briefly focus on the performances in the film. Peck, as I mentioned earlier, gives a performance that can only be described as exceptional. “He wasn't exactly credible as a Florida cracker," writes Peck's biographer, Gary Fishgall, "having imbued his character with more dignity and nobility than a nineteenth-century scrub farmer would have possessed in real life, but he made audiences believe in and care about the man”. I cannot improve on that.

But Jane Wyman, as Peck's wife, in some ways has to assume a harder role: this is not at all the well-meaning companion she played to Ray Milland in Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945), but a stern, unforgiving wife and mother who has let the loss of her children corrupt her patience; it is a better performance than that of her previous film, and exceedingly more brave.

And of course, young Jarman has such irresistible excitement in his eyes for an actor of ten years. Consider the scene in which Jody rescues Flag the fawn, carries him over the fields with explosive white clouds setting up the romantic background behind him, and then greets his ailing father at home. Penny sits up in bed, sees his son looking as happy as ever, and then even he has to smile. This, folks, is about as joyous a moment as cinema gets.

As for Clarence Brown, he was a fitting filmmaker for this material. The Yearling, like his Anna Karenina (1935) adaptation starring Greta Garbo, is a film with happy elements that, alas, cannot possibly end well without ending unhappily. In Anna Karenina, Garbo throws away her empty marriage to Basil Rathbone for the love of Frederic March. Then March abandons her, and- worse- Rathbone denies Garbo access to her son. She will lose all hope and throw herself in front of a moving train. In The Yearling, another type of gruesome sacrifice will have to be made, and that brings me to another thing about Brown: he knew how to handle films about sacrifices. He dared to tread along uncomfortable, taboo subjects that other Hollywood filmmakers wouldn't have touched. Though I haven't seen any of his other films, including National Velvet (1944) or his adaptation of Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust (1949), it isn't difficult for me to recognize him as one of the underrated Hollywood greats. I would put him right up there with Preminger, Zinnemann and Kramer as one of the masters of socially liberal literary adaptations- but that's just me.

I admit that I knew, from reading an online summary, that The Yearling was not going to end happily, so I braced myself for what was sure to be inevitable. We realize, as the film rolls on, that Flag is growing up to be a nuisance for the Baxters, and even when Jody commits back-breaking work to building the farm's third fence or so, this does little to stall Flag's ravenous appetite for the backyard garden plants. Even Penny realizes just how costly Jody's pet has become, and finally tells Jody that he must have Flag euthanized. Jody doesn't have the courage to and, instead, releases Flag into the wild. Predictably, this solves nothing, and when Flag returns, Penny and Ora conspire behind Jody's back and have the deer wounded. Jody comes rushing out in panic, and then his parents befall on him the responsibility of having Flag finished off. Jody is betrayed and hurt. “I hate you,” he screams at them. “I hope you die.” And there is a very moving moment after Flag is shot dead, when tears come streaming down Jody's face. It is a painful scene.

I have less admiration for the later scenes, in which Jody runs away from home, falls unconscious during a canoe ride down the river and is picked up by a steamboat captain who returns him to the farm. It's like something out of Mark Twain, and it feels false here. Another problematic scene is the one that comes afterward, when Penny tries to comfort Jody's misery by giving a speech on how life is hard and lonesome, and how a battered man needs simply to “take it for his share and go on.”

Yes, but isn't this a rather banal message for the film? Some would say that The Yearling is another one of those films about the death of childhood, and how death itself leads a boy to become a man. I don't see it that way; I think that The Yearling is about responsibility, and what happens when that responsibility eventually dies out. That's why I appreciate the final moment when Jody goes to bed and dreams of his days with Flag; it reinforces the real point of the film. Fishgall's biography talks about how Boseley Crowther and other film critics at the time were bothered by this last-minute touch of sentimentality, and how even Peck considered it to be a superfluous Walt Disney element- but I would have to respectfully disagree. The Yearling is not really a film about a boy being raised by his parents to become a man and learn the hard facts of life; it is about a boy who adopts a pet, cares for it, and then must come to terms with its death. Fodderwing's demise foreshadows Flag's demise. Someday, Jody will have to witness the passing of his parents as well.

To put it plainly, this is a film about death. Not just the death of childhood, but death entirely. How do you make your way through such an ordeal? The screenplay for The Yearling was written by Paul Osborn, who gives Peck the last word actually in an earlier scene in the film. In this scene, Penny, Ora, Jody and Flag have all managed to survive a raging storm which has destroyed their crops. Ora is breaking down and Jody is at a loss for words, but Penny at least manages to get out something of a decent summary. “Ma, it seems like sometimes a body gets struck down so low, ain't a power on Earth can ever bring him up again,” he says. “Seems like something inside him dies- so he don't even want to get up again. But he does. There ain't much of a world left for us, but it's all we got. Let's be thankful we got any world at all.”