Harper Lee (USA. 1926)
Her novel To Kill a Mockingbird was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. It was adapted into screen in 1962. The book is set in Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s. Atticus Finch, a lawyer and a father, defends a black man, Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a poor white girl, Mayella Ewell. The setting and several of the characters are drawn from life - Finch was the maiden name of Lee's mother and the character of Dill was drawn from Capote, Lee's childhood friend. The trial itself has parallels to the infamous "Scottboro Trial," in which the charge was rape. In both, too, the defendants were African-American men and the accusers white women.
But the novel and the movie have special power in the depiction of childhood. Watch the title sequence:
Simple reality is so nonviolent... It's symbolic roles that mess things up!
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