Robert Mulligan's To Kill A Mockingbird uses many film elements to portray Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) to be fair and good, wise and intelligent, powerful father. As viewers, we know Atticus is fair and good as he is always shown in the light or associated with light on screen. We also know he is intelligent because of his visual association with books. He is regarded as wise by the way he emerges from doorways to save the day or impart wisdom, as if he is exposing what is right to the world outside the door. The power of Atticus's character is made obvious during his final speech in the courtroom, as he stands higher than everyone else on the main floor due to the camera angle. His higher position during this scene is also made evident in an establishing shot at the end of his speech. Atticus is fatherly in his relationships with his children; this is shown in the ways he shares the screen with his daughter, Scout (Mary Badham).
Atticus never lingers in shadow, and is also often depicted as light itself. During the scene at Maycomb's jail, Atticus stands watch for the night before his black client, Tom Robinson, goes to trial. In order to read in the enveloping dark, Atticus sits in a small pool of light from a lamp: a beacon of what is fair and good in a time of racial bigotry. An angry mob never touches this light when they arrive and surround him, and they leave, still in the dark, after Atticus's defensive children join his force in the light on the stoop.
Atticus's largest, shadowy threat does not lay between Atticus and Tom Robinson (though it is hard to disagree that the rest of Maycomb likely does not have a larger rival than that); instead, it lay between Atticus and Mr. Yule. For example, Atticus owns a hat but wears it sparingly, and he always removes it before speaking the truth in order to prevent his words from being veiled in shadow. Mr. Yule is hardly ever depicted without his hat's brim darkening his eyes (he even wears it occasionally in court room scenes). The strongest example of this clash between Atticus and Mr. Yule occurs when Mr. Yule confronts Atticus at the Robinsons' house the night after Tom Robinson's trial. Mr. Yule wears his hat while he stands in front of Atticus and spits from under the brim on Atticus's face for defending Tom Robinson. Atticus stands for a moment, hat in hand, and does not react until he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket to silently wipe the spittle away, his face still fully lit.
Viewers assume Atticus is also intelligent and wise by certain visual associations. In an early scene of the film, Atticus tucks Scout into bed after reading her a bedtime story. Scout's lamp is still softly illuminated behind the two figures, next to the bed and on a nightstand full of books, as Atticus sits on the bed to say goodnight. The middle-ground lamp and book pile on the stand are positioned between the two foreground figures in the shot. Through this image, it is implied that between Atticus and Scout is his offer as a father of guidance/what is good (light) and knowledge/intelligence (books).
We also associate Atticus with coming out of doorways in the film as he is about to save the day in some way, or if he is about to depart wisdom or knowledge to someone (often his children). Atticus is not a show, but instead a person the world should see. He emerges from the porch door of his family's house in the first scene of the movie just before he accepts Mr. Cunningham's payment of hickory nuts and teaches Scout a humble lesson about patience and generosity. He bursts through the front door to scoop Scout to safety when Scout runs home after she and Jem are attacked by Mr. Yule in the woods one night. When a rabid dog roams the street his family lives on, Atticus rushes home from town and bursts onto the street through the car door to shoot the dog down. He also steps out of his car door when he drives to relay urgent information about Tom Robinson's case and death to Tom's family. The only doorway in the film that Atticus does not clear either going in or out is the doorway in the courtroom next to the judge's stand. At the end of Tom's first (lost) trial, Atticus follows security as they take Tom away again to jail. The group makes it partially through the doorway and then stops as Atticus pleads silently with Tom at the threshold, begging him not to lose hope. Then, as Tom finishes passing under the doorway, Atticus turns back to reenter the courtroom to gather his things and go home. Later that night, Tom runs from imprisonment and is shot to death. This is a case in which Atticus could not save someone with his wisdom, so he does not clear the doorway.
Atticus is also a powerful human being. When he defends Tom Robinson during the trial, we view his final speech from an angle that puts us in one of the jury's chairs. Atticus is taller in this scene than everyone else he speaks to on the floor of the courtroom. His presence rises above the audience as he dominates the screen and his serious and solemn plea begs the jury to, "Do (their) duty, in the name of God!When we are given an establishing shot after his speech, and we see him from behind as he leans on the jury railing, having been hunched over those sitting on the other side during his speech.
While Atticus is depicted to be fair, good, wise, intelligent, and powerful, at the end of the day he is also just being a good father. All film elements discussed so far including lighting, mise en scene, and visual associations attribute to this fact. At the end of the first day in the movie, during the bedtime scene aforementioned, the lighting of the nightstand lamp behind their two figures provides a central, romantic glow to emulate the warm, protective love from Atticus that Scout is enveloped in. Earlier that day, Atticus's fatherly side is depicted via mise en scene as we witness Scout's first lesson of the film. At the base of the porch staircase, father and daughter share the center of the screen; Scout leans from a higher step onto Atticus's shoulder, and we are given a picturesque image of a daughter relying on her father's wisdom, while he tells her about how to patiently preserve Maycomb's poor farmer, Mr. Cunningham's (Crahan Denton), fragile pride. Atticus emerges from the front doorway of the house after Scout throws a tantrum and storms onto the porch. While we associate the doorway with Atticus's wisdom, he then sits as a wise father with Scout on the swing to teach her another lesson about being patient with differences between her and Walter Cunningham, Jr. In every way that Robert Mulligan uses film elements in To Kill A Mockingbird to depict Atticus as a strong individual, Atticus is revealed to be a fair, good, wise, intelligent, and powerful man trying to be an admirable father.
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