Julie Andrews stars in this 1920s madcap musical as the title character, a woman looking to land a job and a husband in the big city, but ends up embroiled with a nefarious white slave trader! Mary Tyler Moore is underutilized as the woman Millie has to rescue from slavery, but Carol Channing chews the scenery in a bizarre Oscar-nominated performance only she could have pulled off. The musical numbers are a little unrelated to the storyline and they do go on a bit long, but there aren’t many numbers in the movie, and I believe they’re all over before the intermission. After the intermission, things move very quickly. Director George Roy Hill (The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) stretches out of his comfort zone so well, the last half-hour will have you wondering if Blake Edwards took over the film. It’s an intentionally silly, over-the-top sort of movie that pays off better than most of its sort.
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is lovingly adapted to film by director Robert Mulligan, screenwriter Horton Foote, and producer Alan J. Pakula. Gregory Peck earned the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, a lawyer of uncompromising morals who puts the safety of his family on the line to defend Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), a black man accused of raping a white woman. Finch is also a widower, raising his two young children with the help of his maid Calpurnia (Estelle Evans). The narrative is made a coming-of-age story through the eyes of Finch’s youngest, the feisty Jean Louise — or Scout (Mary Badham) as she’s nicknamed. Scout’s perspective on racism is balanced with her own fear and ignorance surrounding a neighbor named Boo Radley (Robert Duvall), who turns out to be her salvation when she and her brother are attacked by a bigot seeking revenge on their father.
