Plot
The film's young protagonists, Jean Louise "Scout" Finch (Mary Badham) and her brother Jem (Phillip Alford), live in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama,
during the 1930s. The story covers three years, during which Scout and
Jem undergo changes in their lives. They begin as innocent children, who
spend their days happily playing games with each other and spying on
Arthur "Boo" Radley, the town bogeyman (Robert Duvall). Their father, Atticus (Gregory Peck),
is a town lawyer and has a strong belief that all people are to be
treated fairly, to turn the other cheek, and to stand for what you
believe. He also allows his children to call him by his first name.
Through their father's work as a lawyer, Scout and Jem begin to learn of
the racism and evil prevalent in their town, and mature painfully and quickly as they are exposed to it.
The kids follow Atticus to watch a rape
trial, in which an innocent black man, Tom Robinson, is wrongfully
found guilty, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (among
Atticus' chief arguments, he points out that Tom is crippled in his left
arm, and that the supposed rapist would have had to make extensive use
of his left hand to have carried out the crime as it was being described
by the teenage "victim" and her father). Atticus also brings to light
the alarmingly unusual and suspicious fact that the girl had not even
been examined by a doctor after the supposed assault to check for signs
of rape or to determine if her hymen was even broken, and even after
Atticus' earnest pleas to the jury for them to cast aside their
prejudices against blacks and instead to focus on the evidence of Tom's
obvious innocence. Tom is doomed, however, when he takes the stand in
his own defense and reveals that he felt pity for the victim due to her
circumstances.
Atticus arrives home to find out that Robinson has been killed in an
attempt to escape from jail. Atticus is subsequently vilified by some of
the locals for his having defended a black man, and the whole town is
in quite a stir over the matter for a good while. After a few months,
things appear to have settled down, and Scout goes to a Halloween
pageant with Jem. On their way home that night, Scout and Jem are
attacked by the vengeful Bob Ewell, the drunkard father (and the real
assailant) of the girl whom Tom Robinson had been falsely accused of
molesting. Mr. Ewell slashes at Scout with a knife, but the chicken-wire
framework of her Halloween costume protects her from the blade. During
the struggle, Jem is knocked unconscious and his arm is broken, but then
Bob Ewell is overpowered and killed by a tall dark figure that suddenly
appears on the scene. Scout sees the whole thing from a small view hole
in her ham costume that she is still wearing.
Jem is carried home by this mysterious man who turns out to be the
previously-mentioned Arthur "Boo" Radley, and afterwards it is revealed
that Boo — in caring appreciation for Scout and Jem's not having taunted
and shunned him the way other townspeople had done — had for a long
time assumed the role of the children's guardian angel, often secretly
watching over and following a distance behind Scout and Jem when they
were out at night, to help them and protect them from harm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird_%28film%29
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