If one mentions the American director Robert Mulligan, the first thing that comes to mind is his film To Kill a Mocking Bird… But if we look deeper into his rich opus of work, it reveals a workaholic who could switch with great ease between different vocations, media and genres



Robert Mulligan, the son of a policeman, at first considered devoting his life to the demanding task of maintaining order and catching criminals but soon after dropping out of his studies of theology and afterwards radiophony at Fordham, became involved in journalism (New York Times). He abandoned this as well and devoted more energy to the newest medium in expansion - television. At first he worked on a crime series (for CBS) with about a hundred episodes and later got a chance to try adapting literary and drama classics (Dickens, Maugham, Wilder…).

He made his feature film debut with the dark psychological drama Fear Strikes Out (1957), which (in a Freudian fashion) deals with the issue of stage fright due to anxiety, experienced in this case by a famous baseball player. Later, thanks to the producer Alan Pakula, a powerful friend and ally for twelve years, he made many films of different genres. After his debut he made two successful comedies: The Rat Race and The Great Impostor (both 1960). His other early works include the popular melodrama Love with the Proper Stranger (1964) and the extremely popular Summer of '42 (1971) a film that skillfully toys with the eternal theme of playful youth in puberty. He made a western (The Stalking Moon, 1968), and tried out for two psychological dramas Inside Daisy Clover (1965) and Up the Down Staircase (1967). He also made a horror The Other (1972). He made his last film The Man in the Moon in 1991.

He was always interested in the commercial success of his films and worked with all the famous stars of that time: Debbie Reynolds, Tony Curtis, Steve McQueen, Nathalie Wood, Rock Hudson, Eve Marie Saint, Lee Remick, Jennifer O' Neal, Gina Lolobrigida, Ellen Burstyn, Alan Alda; in his film The Man in the Moon he worked with Reese Witherspoon who made his debut in it and he also worked with Richard Gere when he was a young actor. When connoisseurs speak of some general characteristics of Mulligan’s disparate opus, they tend to stick (without raising the issue of poetics) at individual traits, one of the most constant ones being his skillful contrast of shadow and light.

Why do most people believe that To Kill a Mockingbird was and remains his best film, his trademark? The story of that disturbing film takes place in the 1930s in Alabama. A proper gentleman and Judge, Atticus Finch (intensely played by the great Gregory Peck), also a single father of two children, has a challenging task in his career: he has to defend a young black man accused of raping a white girl. After a somewhat slow exposition, the film gains in rhythm and drama and skillfully portrays the explosive atmosphere that culminates in the racist intolerance of the hot and dangerous American South. As in many American films, its protagonist appears in the form of a lonely and courageous individual. (Petar Krelja)