In Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, a group of village girls meet in the woods with slave Tituba, attempting to conjure love spells. Abigail Williams kills a chicken and drinks its blood, wishing for John Proctor's wife Elizabeth to die. When Abigail's uncle, Reverend Samuel Parris, discovers them, the girls run away, but his daughter Betty collapses unconscious.
Betty will not awaken, nor will Thomas and Ann Putnam's daughter Ruth, who was also conjuring. Giles Corey, who suspects that the children are just acting out, and John Proctor, with whom Abigail had an affair, visit the Parris household. Believing Betty and Ruth to be demonically possessed, Parris and the Putnams call Reverend John Hale from nearby Beverly to examine Betty. To save herself and the other girls from punishment, Abigail accuses Tituba of witchcraft. After being whipped, Tituba confesses to seeing the devil and is saved from being hanged. Struck by their new power, the girls begin naming numerous other women, including Elizabeth, whom they "saw" with the devil.
John wants to forget about his affair with Abigail and get back with Elizabeth. He decides to stop Abigail's accusations, telling his servant, Mary Warren, who is one of the "afflicted" girls, to testify at the trial that the witchcraft was faked. In court, Francis Nurse gives a list of people vouching for the accused; the judges order that all on the list be arrested and brought in for questioning. Giles insists that when Ruth accused Rebecca Nurse, Mr. Putnam was heard to tell Ruth that she had won him a "fine gift of land". Giles refuses to identify who heard this remark, and the judges order his arrest. Mary Warren insists she only thought she saw spirits but the other girls later cow her into recanting. Elizabeth says she is pregnant and will be spared from death until the baby is born, but John insists that the girls be charged with false witness.
The girls are called in and asked if they were lying about the witchcraft, but they start screaming that Mary Warren is bewitching them. To demonstrate Abigail's complicity, John confesses to having sex with her, claiming that she accused Elizabeth in order to get rid of her so that she could marry him. Abigail denies the affair, so Elizabeth is called in to verify it. Unaware that John confessed and wanting to save his reputation, she lies. As Reverend Hale tries to persuade the court of John's honesty, the girls turn the court further against the Proctors by screaming that Mary Warren is attacking them as a "yellow bird". John repeats his accusation that the girls are merely pretending, but they run outside from the "bird" into a nearby lake. To save herself from being hanged, Mary Warren accuses John of witchcraft. When asked if he will return to God, John despairingly yells "I say God is dead!" and is arrested as a witch.
On the day before John is to be hanged, Reverend Hale confronts Abigail at the now-abandoned homes of the victims whom she testified against. Because Hale was the lone official in the court to doubt her claims, Abigail attempts to convince the court that Hale's wife is also a witch; however, this backfires as the judges doubt her, as they consider a minister's wife to be pure. Eventually, the girls become outcasts and Abigail steals Parris' money to flee to Barbados, but not before asking John to go with her, telling him she never wished any of this on him. He refuses, stating "It's not on a ship we'll meet again, but in Hell".
Parris fears that John's hanging will cause riots directed at him, so he allows Elizabeth to meet with John to convince him to "confess" and save his life. John agrees and writes the confession. The judges insist that he sign the confession and publicly display it to prove his guilt and to convince others to confess, but John, determined to keep his name pure for his sons, angrily shouts "Leave me my name!", and tears it up.
On the gallows, John, Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey's recitation of the Lord's Prayer is cut short when they are hanged. A closing title card states that the Salem Witch Trials were brought to an end after nineteen people were executed after they refused to save themselves by giving false confessions.
In 1952, Miller's friend Elia Kazan appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); fearful of being blacklisted from Hollywood, Kazan named eight members of the Group Theatre, including Clifford Odets, Paula Strasberg, Lillian Hellman, and John Garfield, who in recent years had been fellow members of the Communist Party. After speaking with Kazan about his testimony, Miller traveled to Salem, Massachusetts to research the witch trials of 1692. The Crucible, in which Miller likened the situation with the House Un-American Activities Committee to the witch hunt in Salem in 1692, opened at the Beck Theatre on Broadway on January 22, 1953.
Miller and Kazan were close friends throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s (the latter had directed the original production of Miller's Death of a Salesman), but after Kazan's testimony to the HUAC, the pair's friendship ended, and they did not speak to each other for the next ten years. The HUAC took an interest in Miller himself not long after The Crucible opened, denying him a passport to attend the play's London opening in 1954. Later Miller was further checked out: when testimony came out that he misled the HUAC, he was sentenced to a $500 fine and a 30-day stay in jail. It was overturned on appeal. Kazan defended his own actions through his film On the Waterfront, in which a dockworker heroically testifies against a corrupt union boss.
Though the play was widely considered only somewhat successful at the time of its first production, today The Crucible is Miller's most frequently produced work throughout the world. It was adapted as an opera by Robert Ward, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1962.
Historical accuracy
The movie kept many of the play's documented inaccuracies. Various characters' ages were changed including making Abigail Williams older and John Proctor younger when in reality they were approximately 12 and 60 respectively. Like the play, the movie fabricates a relationship between the two. Characters and events were also conflated, such as featuring Thomas Danforth presiding over the trials when he was not documented to do so in reality, or combining the trials and sentences of John Proctor, Martha Corey, and Rebecca Nurse.[2]
Reception
The movie was not a box office success,[3] making only $7,343,114 in the United States.[4]
Critical reception
The film has an overall score of 70% on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 63 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The critics consensus states, "This staid adaptation ofThe Crucibledutifully renders Arthur Miller's landmark play on the screen with handsome production design and sturdy performances, if not with the political anger and thematic depth that earned the drama its reputation."[5]Victor Navasky of The New York Times wrote that the film was "thought impossible to make during the McCarthy years" due to its allegorical connections to McCarthyism, yet was "probably destined for Hollywood all along".[6]
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a grade of "A", calling the adaptation "joltingly powerful" and noting the "spectacularly" acted performances of Day-Lewis, Scofield, and Allen.[7]Roger Ebert gave the film 2 out of 4 stars, writing that the "story has all the right moves and all the correct attitudes, but there is something lacking at its core; I think it needs less frenzy and more human nature".[8] Philip Thomas of Empire gave the film 5 out of 5 stars, calling it an "almost perfect screen adaptation".[9]
The Crucible is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists. Miller was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging. One other man, Giles Corey, died under torture after refusing to enter a plea, and at least five people died in jail.
Abigail Williams was an 11- or 12-year-old girl who, along with nine-year-old Betty Parris, was among the first of the children to falsely accuse their neighbors of witchcraft in 1692; these accusations eventually led to the Salem witch trials.
Elizabeth "Betty" Parris was one of the young girls who accused other people of being witches during the Salem witch trials. The accusations made by Parris and her cousin Abigail Williams caused the direct death of 20 Salem residents: 19 were hanged, while another, Giles Corey, was pressed to death.
{{Infobox criminal | name = John Proctor | birth_date = 9 October 1632 | birth_place = Suffolk, England | death_date = 19 August 1692 (aged 59) | death_place = Salem Village | death_cause = Execution by hanging | spouse = Martha Giddens (m. c. 1653; d. 1659) Elizabeth Thorndike (m. 1662; d. 1672) {{marriage|[[Elizabeth Proctor] |1674}} [[Anna Proctor] |1676}} | children = 18; 4 7 7 | conviction = Witchcraft | penalty = Death
John Hale was the Puritan pastor of Beverly, Massachusetts, and took part in the Salem witch trials in 1692. He was one of the most prominent and influential ministers associated with the witch trials, being noted as having initially supported the trials and then changing his mind and publishing a critique of them.
Elizabeth Proctor was convicted of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. She was the wife of John Proctor, who was convicted and executed.
Samuel Parris was the Puritan minister in Salem Village, Massachusetts, during the Salem witch trials. He was also the father of one of the afflicted girls, and the uncle of another.
Tituba was a Native American enslaved woman who was one of the first to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693.
The Crucible is a 1957 joint Franco-East German film production directed by Raymond Rouleau with a screenplay adapted by Jean-Paul Sartre from the 1953 play The Crucible, by Arthur Miller.
Sarah Good was one of the first three women to be accused of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials, which occurred in 1692 in colonial Massachusetts.
Mary Ann Warren was an accuser and later confessed witch during the 1692 Salem witch trials. She was a servant for John and Elizabeth Proctor. Renouncing her claims after threats of beating from her master, she was later accused and arrested for allegedly practicing witchcraft herself, after which she again became afflicted and accused others of witchcraft. Her life after the trials is unknown.
The Crucible is a 1961 English language opera written by Robert Ward based on the 1953 play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. It won both the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics Circle Citation. The libretto was lightly adapted from Miller's text by Bernard Stambler.
Sarah Osborne (also variously spelled Osbourne, Osburne, or Osborn; née Warren, formerly Prince, was a colonist in the Massachusetts Bay colony and one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials of 1692. Sarah Osborn was suggested to be a witch by Sarah Good. Sarah Good said she had been tormenting the girls.
Mercy Lewis was an accuser during the Salem Witch Trials. She was born in Falmouth, Maine. Mercy Lewis, formally known as Mercy Allen, was the child of Philip Lewis and Mary (Cass) Lewis.
Cultural depictions of the Salem witch trials abound in art, literature and popular media in the United States, from the early 19th century to the present day. The literary and dramatic depictions are discussed in Marion Gibson's Witchcraft Myths in American Culture and see also Bernard Rosenthal's Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692
This timeline of the Salem witch trials is a quick overview of the events.
Elizabeth Booth was born in 1674 and was one of the accusers in the Salem Witch Trials. She grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, as the second eldest of ten children. When she was sixteen she was accused of being a witch. When she was eighteen, she began accusing people of practicing witchcraft, including John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, Sarah Proctor, William Proctor, Benjamin Proctor, Woody Proctor, Giles Corey, Martha Corey, Job Tookey, and Wilmont Redd. Five of these people were executed due to Booth's testimony. Elizabeth Proctor would have been executed as well if she was not pregnant. After the Witch Trials, Booth married Israel Shaw on December 26, 1695, and had two children named Israel and Susanna. Booth's death date is unknown.
Mary Black was a slave of African descent in the household of Nathaniel Putnam of the Putnam family who was accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. Nathaniel's nephew was Thomas Putnam, one of the primary accusers, though Nathaniel himself was skeptical and even defended Rebecca Nurse. Mary was arrested, indicted, and imprisoned, but did not go to trial, and was released by proclamation on January 21, 1693 [O.S. January 11, 1692]. She returned to Nathaniel's household after she was released, another indication of Nathaniel's view of the charges against her.
↑ Ray, Benjamin. "Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive". Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. Scholars' Lab of the University of Virginia Library.
↑ "1996 SEFA Awards". Southeastern Film Critics Association. Retrieved October 5, 2023.
↑ "AFI's 10 Top 10 Nominees"(PDF). Archived from the original on 2011-07-16. Retrieved 2016-08-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
