Cinema: May 10, 1963

To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck's Oscar-winning performance as Atticus Finch is good, but the kids, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford and John Megna almost steal the show in this pleasant screen version of the Pulitzer Prizewinning novel.

Lazarillo. Based on a 1554 Spanish novel, Lazarillo is a sort of 16th century Huckleberry Finn which details the misadventures of its young hero as he pits wits and wiles against a world of unscrupulous adults.

Mondo Cane. The bite of this documentary of depravity is even worse than its bark: the thesis that the world has gone to the dogs.

Lafayette. The main reason for seeing this Louis XVI version of the American Revolution is to watch what happens when the French try to give U.S. audiences a taste of their own widescreen, Technicolored medicine. Orson Welles, in a Father Knickerbocker suit and a frenzied-fright wig is hilarious as Benjamin Franklin in one of the film's few intentionally comic scenes.

The Stripper. William Inge's play, A Loss of Roses, comes to the screen with a title that will infuriate customers hoodwinked into thinking they are going to see a sequel to Gypsy. The locale is the same familiar tank-town-in-summer that is the favorite setting for Problem pictures; who would guess what was going on inside the tacky little white house there behind the hydrangea bushes? Who, really, would care?

Fiasco in Milan. This one takes up where Big Deal on Madonna Street leaves off, with Comic Carlo Pisacane trying desperately to keep his tapeworm living in the style to which it has become accustomed. Vittorio Gassman and his Madonna Street gang wiggle through some funny scenes.

The Man from the Diners' Club. Danny Kaye has got into the clutches of the Jerry Lewis people and is forced to caper through a series of predictable sight gags, but television's Telly Savalas as a murderous mobster almost hijacks the show with his menacing geniality.

Landru. A highly colored documentary on France's World War I Bluebeard who killed ten women for their money. Françoise Sagan's script drips cynicism, but Claude Chabrol's provocative camera work and the archly stylized acting of the cast (Charles Denner, Danielle Darrieux, Michele Morgan) manage to make it worthwhile.

How the West Was Won. The wraparound wonders of Cinerama embrace huge chunks of U.S. history in a spectacle that is part pageant, part shoot-'em-up and part travelogue. A stampede of stars competes with a herd of buffaloes, and comes off second best.

Love Is a Ball. The ball is filled with hot air, but Hope Lange and Glenn Ford keep it bouncing all along the Riviera.

The Birds. The sea gulls will get you, if you don't watch Hitchcock.

The Ugly American. Ambassador Brando, in a Ronald Colman mustache and a Fred Astaire top hat, matches ideologies with a native revolutionist in faraway South Sarkhan. Most of the Americans involved in this fanciful adaptation of the Burdick-Lederer novel are so lacking in charm that it is hard to decide just who is the ugliest.