The Crucible [1997] [DVD]

The movie recounts a fictionalized version of the famous Salem, Massachusetts witch trials of 1692, which saw quite a number of of the town's citizens executed for witchcraft. Winona Ryder is excellent as Abigail Williams, the poor relation of the town's craven minister, well played by Bruce Davison.

Dancing with other young women around a camp fire in the woods one evening, Abigail is surprised by the intrusion of the minister into their festivities. He is just as surprised as they are. The young women are in terror of having been caught doing something forbidden to them, and the games begin.

"The devil made me do it!" becomes the rallying cry of the day, as the young women begin pointing the finger at those townsfolk who in some measure have come under their unfavorable scrutiny. Beginning with Tituba, the slave, who is the first to fall, the circle of those accused widens under the careful leadership of Abigail.

She ultimately sets her sights on Elizabeth Proctor, the prim wife of John Proctor, played with icy calm by Joan Allen. Elizabeth is the woman for whom Abigail had previously worked and from whose employ she had been dismissed, as Mrs. Proctor had rightly suspected her of having an affair with her husband, John.

Abigail still lusts mightily for John, who has spurned her subsequent overtures and advances. She, who has been nothing, has suddenly been empowered in such a way that what she desires may be only an accusation away from being hers, or so Abigail thinks.

John Proctor, wonderfully portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis, is a taciturn everyman, who does not traffic too much with the townfolk. As witch mania grips the town, however, he becomes more vocal. When his wife is taken into custody on a charge of witchcraft, he can no longer keep silent. He comes to her defense in full fury at the injustice done to his wife and the other poor souls unjustly accused of witchcraft and trafficking with the devil, only to ultimately be done in by love and his own integrity.

It is almost hard to believe that such an event as the Salem witch trials ever really took place, but truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. This film bring that notorious chapter in American history to life. It is well worth watching.

As a result, we see Winona Ryder, as Abigail Williams, and her coterie of bewitched girls, screaming hysterically and accusing innocent women of witchcraft without the necessary background which would make these accusations plausible. Her previous relationship with John Proctor (Daniel Day-Lewis), in the absence of other motivations, seems to be the primary reason for her behavior, but this thwarted love does not explain the extent of her rage or the involvement of the other girls. Day-Lewis is reduced to the role of victim, and one of the hallmarks of his acting, his subtlety, is absent here. Some details of the scenery also ring false. Houses in this period were very small because of the difficulty of heating, though John Proctor's house here is as large as that of a governor, and other buildings, including the church/meeting house are huge, contrary to the religious avoidance of display during the period.

This is a Hollywood version of the witchcraft trials, capitalizing on the sensational without conveying the tumultuous background--the Indian wars which were just ending, the growing independence of individuals, the increasing resentment of the all-powerful church with its hard-line restrictions, the limitations placed on women, and most importantly, the lack of any role whatsoever for young women, who were not old enough to assume a woman's role but were old enough to have reached sexual maturity without any outlet for their feelings, a lethal mix of boredom and repression. The film is beautiful, and the acting, though one-dimensional, is as effective as it can be in the absence of fully-developed motivation for the girls' hysteria. The "witches" are reduced to cartoons here, and Miller's parallels between these trials and the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, which put the play's trials into a modern context, are missing. Mary Whipple