To Kill a Mockingbird: Formal-Aesthetic Analysis: Scout saves Atticus

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In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout unknowingly saves Atticus from a group of men outside the jailhouse. The 1962 film faithfully adapts the novel by conveying the same implication that Scout unknowingly made the men feel bad about themselves and placed herself as an equal among the men. The unspoken elements of lighting, camera angles and framing helped achieve this concept.
The scene in the film begins with Scout, played by Mary Badham, running up to Atticus, played Gregory Peck, through the group of men with Jem and Dill following behind. The camera is at Badham’s point of view which shows the men from their torsos and leads up to showing Peck with a low angle and high-key lighting while he is standing up. The camera being at Badham’s point of view brings across two concepts, Scout is a child and the men are intimidating. Badham’s eye-level is the men’s torsos which shows how small she is among them and how they tower over her creating the idea of a threat. However, Atticus is being presented with high-key lighting that demonstrates that he is not a threat to her. Instead he is her focus and the low angle shows that he is above them, higher class than the men and older than the children.
Once Atticus starts telling Jem to take Scout and Dill home there is a continuous close up on Peck’s face during the conversation. The camera also follows Jem, played by Philip Alford, during the conversation though in his shots it also includes Badham and Dill, played by John Megna, to show the subjects as the children in general instead of solely one. During the conversation, Peck’s and Alford’s facial expressions show the worry that Atticus and Jem have and it steps up the concept that men are the reason behind the worry. At the beginning of ...

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...ates that he does not want to be seen and the shadow over his eyes make him appear as if guilty. A person would feel guilty if they do or did something that is not right. On the other hand, Badham has high-key lighting throughout the scene, including before she started talking, with no shadows on her face. The full light on her shows that she has nothing to hide and in a way displays her innocence.
In conclusion, the 1962 film, To Kill a Mockingbird, successfully adapted the novel’s impression that “it took an eight-year-old child to bring ‘em to their (the men) senses” (Lee 179). This impression was brought on by the analysis of elements such as lighting and the camera’s framing and angles.

Works Cited

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Perennial Classics, 2002. Print.
To Kill a Mockingbird. Dir. Robert Mulligan. 1962. Universal Pictures. 2006. DVD.

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