Robert Mulligan, 1962 Joel Schumacher, 1996

Start comparing

• Please answer the following questions in your notebooks – feel free to also type notes up if you wish, I will not be marking these notes but they will be needed to participate in lessons and they will be vital for your exam.

• You have a copy of slide 4 in the folders I gave you – you will need it to help you answer 8

• Remember internet research will help you with question 4 – BUT most things you find will be English revision notes talking about the books – do keep that in mind.

Start comparing

1. Who are the main protagonists in each film? Compare and contrast them2. What other characters are important in the film?3. What key themes do you think both films share? E.g. Justice & The Law4. TKAM was set in the 1930s what was happening in America at this time?5. Films often reflect the time they were made – TKAM was made in 1962

what was happening in America at this time?6. Two big criminal cases in the 1990s involved O.J. Simpson and Rodney King

– find out about these cases and propose how links can be made to ATTK7. Where are the films set? Why is this important to what occurs in the

narrative of each film?8. In what ways to the films fulfil the genre conventions of Lawyer films? (Look

at the next slide explain how each film conforms/or not to each bullet point)

9. How are the themes you have listed communicated to you?10. How do the themes help to communicate massages values?

‘Lawyer Film’ Conventions

• the film’s protagonist, central character, or narrator is a lawyer;

• the film presents the lawyer engaged in professional work;

• the lawyer’s work, his life, and his world, have been significantly disrupted either by a client’s case or cause, or by some feature of the lawyer’s work, or his/her life in the law firm, or by some event in the lawyer’s personal life;

• the ordinary world of the lawyer is subject to a significant threat;

• the threat of confusion, dissolution, loss, uncontrolled outrage, craziness must be addressed, and it gets addressed by the lawyer's resort to professional and personal resources related to the character's work as a lawyer; and in addressing the threat, the lawyer’s work and the meaning of that work is at stake;

• the lawyer may, during the course of the drama that ensues from the upending of his ordinary world, be involved in litigation that culminates in dramatic courtroom scenes;

• the lawyer’s courtroom battles, engagements with clients, and efforts to marshal his or her own psychological resources encounter substantial obstacles, and in the deployment of his/her resources, and the inevitable failures to immediately prevail, we find the lawyer engaged in something akin to a heroic journey.

Atticus Finch Jake Brigance

Bob EwellFreddie Lee Cobb

Professor James R. ElkinsCollege of Law

West Virginia University