Gregory Peck's Oscar-winning performance! A 1962 American legal drama crime film directed by Robert Mulligan , starring Gregory Peck and Mary Badham . Adapted from Harper Lee &'s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird , the film follows lawyer Atticus Finch in Depression -era Alabama educating his children against prejudice while defending a black man who is falsely charged with the rape of a white woman. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest movies ever made .