DIRECTOR'S NOTES

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the great American stories. With clear, simple strokes it paints a moving portrait of a child’s coming of age, small town southern life in the Great Depression, and the lingering, poisonous shadows of slavery.

 

In 1960, when the novel was first published, it stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over eighty weeks. In 1961, it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The film premiered in 1962 with a screenplay written by Horton Foote and starring Gregory Peck. It was a Best Picture nominee and won three Academy Awards. By 1966, the book had sold ten million copies and was published in a dozen languages around the world.

 

This enormous success was due not only to the book’s literary stature, but also to its timing. In the midst of our national struggle over civil rights, the voices of Scout and Atticus Finch were deeply sane and powerfully resonant. Indeed, in 1991, a national Survey of Lifetime Reading Habits conducted by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress found that To Kill a Mockingbird was second only to The Bible in having “the largest impact” on people’s lives.

 

We’ve come a long way since 1960. We’ve come longer still since 1935, when the story begins. Perhaps by now we can fully claim our history in all its ugliness and beauty, because we realize it is essential to who and what we are as Americans.

 

Regardless, To Kill a Mockingbird retains its power because it resonates so simply and clearly with our lives. Each of us has felt the hurt and confusion of discovering that the world is unjust. Each of us has been touched by watching someone brave enough to witness for the truth. And, hopefully, each of us has learned to walk around a bit in another person’s shoes.

 

Great art does not preach or judge, it raises questions. Sometimes it even asks for an answer. To Kill a Mockingbird looks back with open eyes and remembers where we’ve been. But like young Scout, it gazes forward, too.