Good example Cape Fear with Peck as the head of a family menaced by alltime cunning sicko Robert Mitchum. At the climax Peck trains a gun on the villain. Shoot’im Greg But no. This time the good guy is not going to kill the bad guy the rotter will be tried convicted and imprisoned. A less confident actor might have let this verdict sound like weakness but Peck sells the notion that life in jail is as unpleasant as a bullet in the gut.
Winners and losers are all too clearly defined in today’s movies. Peck’s best films always found thoughtful shades of gray. Atticus has taken on the case of a black man accused of raping a white woman—a perilous assignment in an Alabama town in the 1930s. He argues his case brilliantly demolishes the opposition convinces each member of the movie audience.... and loses. But Atticus has shown courage in the fight. As he leaves the courtroom in defeat a black preacher attending the trial whispers a command to Atticus’ 6yearold daughter. “Miss Jean Louise stand up” he tells the girl. “Your father’s passin’.”
Later in the film Peck embodies a kind of pacifist resistance. The white woman’s racist father sees Peck with some blacks and spits in his face. Peck with ferocious dignity takes out a handkerchief wipes off the insult and walks away—the victor by not fighting back. Good man to lead tough act to follow.
It’s dangerous to confuse an actor with his movie roles. But by all accounts the reel and the real Gregory Peck were close kin. He was a model of probity a loyal friend to colleagues in distress a father confessor to the Hollywood community. He chaired the National Society of This the American Academy of That. He was laden with official honors Lyndon Johnson gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom Richard Nixon put him on his Enemies List. Peck received perhaps his sweetest laurel last week when the reclusive Lee on hearing of his death said “Gregory Peck was a beautiful man. Atticus Finch gave him the opportunity to play himself.”
But who will play the Gregory Peck hero now that noble is for wimps and the best place to find integrity is in Webster’s﹖ The masculine delicacy that Peck represented is gone from films no star has filled his mold. Movie actors don’t have the voice or posture or temperament for it. Maybe America can’t believe in it.
To cherish Peck is to admit nostalgia for an era when popular and political culture could champion humanist ideals without smirking. If our time were not so facetious so often corrupt that time—and this man—would not seem so precious.
America stand up. Gregory Peck has passed on. -
格利高里·派克：不朽的美国绅士
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