The Crucible

A 17th-century Salem woman accuses an ex-lover’s wife of witchery in an adaptation of the Arthur Miller play.

• Director:Nicholas Hytner
• Genre:Drama / History
• Runtime:123 minutes

Cast

Daniel Day-Lewis: John Proctor
Winona Ryder : Abigail Williams
Paul Scofield : Judge Thomas Danforth
Joan Allen : Elizabeth Proctor
Bruce Davison : Reverend Parris

Early morning in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts. All of the young village girls meet in the woods with a black slave from Barbados named Tituba. Tituba begins a ritual and the girls call out the names of men they wish to marry. One girl, named Abigail, does something different. Instead of calling for the man she loves, named John Proctor, she kills a chicken, and drinks the blood, and wishes for Proctor’s wife to die. The girls begin to dance (one of them even runs naked) and run through the woods and suddenly are surprised when Abigail’s uncle, Reverend Parris (Bruce Davison) come to them. As the girls scream and run away, Parris’ daughter, Betty, falls over unconscious.

Back at Parris’ house, Parris questions Abigail about the events that took place in the woods, and then slaps her across the face in suspicion that she is lying to him. Betty will not awaken, nor will Ruth, the daughter of Thomas and Ann Putnam, who was also dancing. This strikes Mrs. Putnam hard as she has had seven other children before Ruth who died at childbirth. As well as the Putnams, the Parris house is also visited by Giles Corey, who is concerned about how his wife constantly reads books, Rebecca Nurse, who suspects that the children are just acting their sicknesses, and John Proctor. While alone outside with Proctor, Abigail strikes up a conversation with him, revealing that when she worked at his home previously, they had had an affair. Now Abigail still loves Proctor, but he feels that he made a mistake and leaves her. The Putnams and Reverend Parris believe that Betty and Ruth are demonically possessed, so they call from another town the Reverend Hale, who examines Betty, then gathers together the other girls who danced. To save themselves from punishment, Abigail claims that Tituba was working with the devil the entire time. The attention then turns to Tituba who insists on her innocence. When no one believes her, she confesses (after being whipped mercilessly and threatened with death if she did not confess) and then she and all the other girls, including Betty, begin naming other women whom they “saw” with the devil. Soon, old drunks, people who curse others, and those who do so much as look funnily at others are accused as witches. Of those accused, three were Rebecca Nurse (accused by the Putnams for the supernatural murder of Mrs. Putnam’s babies), Martha Corey (for supernaturally cursing a man so that all the pigs he bought would die), and Elizabeth Proctor, John’s wife (accused by Abigail of using a doll to supernaturally give her a stab wound in the stomach). Read more

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