One of the best of the best – ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ – available on super-restored Blu-ray

“TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD: 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION”

Blu-ray widescreen and DVD widescreen, 1962, not rated

Best extra: A 90-minute standard-def documentary, “Fearful Symmetry: The Making of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’” carried over from three previous DVDs, includes interviews from the cast and residents of Monroeville, Ala., birthplace of author Harper Lee

CELEBRATING YOUR 100th anniversary is a BIG DEAL! And Universal Studios has decided to pull out all the stops, restoring their finest cinematic works through the latest digital technology. Scratches, flickers and blemishes have been removed and color has been polished to a new brilliance.

“The group of titles we’re working on now … were selected by executives and film historians. We can … preserve them for generations to come,” says Peter Schade, vice president of Universal Studios Technical Services, during a high-def featurette highlighting the studios’ restoration projects.

Over the next year, Universal will release several treasures on Blu-ray including “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Jaws,” “Dracula,” “Frankenstein,” “The Birds,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” “Out of Africa” and more, offering viewers an outstanding home theater experience.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” receives the distinguished first release, with Gregory Peck’s Oscar-winning performance as Atticus Finch, the Southern lawyer trying to teach and protect his two children, Scout, a precocious, six-year-old tomboy (Mary Badham), and Jem, her 10-year-old brother (Phillip Alford) from a world of bigotry and ignorance. Atticus is also defending a black man (Brock Peters) accused of raping a white woman (Collin Wilcox Paxton) during the Depression. Badham and Alford were first-time actors, discovered during auditions in Birmingham, Ala., where director Robert Mulligan hoped to find authentic southern children.

The high-def restoration results are thrilling. Using the original 35mm camera negative, it has the right amount of natural film grain and powerful, inky blacks for the black and white picture. In the past, Universal has struggled to get these elements right in their older movies. The epic “Spartacus” was a Blu-ray disaster, with excess contrast and gobs of digital noise reduction giving the actors waxy faces and destroying detail. Now it seems the studio has readjusted its computers and taken a more orthodox approach to preservation. “When you’re restoring films today, you want to maintain the creative artistic look from the producer, the director and the cinematographer as they collaborated. You don’t want to lose that in restoration,” says Rick Utley, vice president of Preservation Services, Kodak Pro-Tek Media Preservation.

The disc features more than three-hours of extras including Peck’s 1989 American Film Institute’s acceptance speech for the coveted AFI Life Achievement Award, where he details how his career began. Originally a pre-med student, Peck trained two years at a prestigious New York City drama school. He then received his first part, a small role in “The Doctor’s Dilemma” co-starring Katharine Cornell. Within a couple of years, Peck was under contract with four studios during World War II. Hollywood was desperate for young leading men and Peck was exempt from military service because of a spinal injury.

Peck’s daughter Cecilia provides personal stories during the Academy’s tribute to her father. She describes how he had written four words – fairness, courage, stubbornness and love – on the last page of his “To Kill a Mockingbird” script. She says it was impossible to separate her dad from the heroic Atticus. She also recalls how producer Alan J. Pakula and Mulligan sent Peck the Pulitzer Prize novel and how author Harper Lee became a lifelong friend of the family. Cecilia named her son after the author.

Additional extras include: pop-up video commentary with interviews, photos and narration from Peck’s family; Peck’s Academy Award acceptance speech; commentary with Pakula and Mulligan, and a documentary by Cecilia Peck, which takes us inside Peck’s personal life and features interviews from co-stars, and former President Bill Clinton.

The Blu-ray can be purchased in a Combo pack which includes a DVD in a grand “Limited Collector’s Series,” where the two discs are housed in a 44-page hardcover book with storyboards, handwritten notes, poster art and newspaper clippings.

Well done Universal. Hopefully, the rest of the series will be just as striking.

— Bill Kelley III

COMMENTS ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here; comments do not reflect the views of The Virginian-Pilot or its websites. Users must follow agreed-upon rules: Be civil, be clean, be on topic; don't attack private individuals, other users or classes of people. Read the full rules here.
- Comments are automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules, click the report violation link below it.