If it weren't for me reading the script to Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" I never would have understood Nicholas Hytner's adaptation of the play quite as well as I did. The movie is historical fiction which talks about the 1692 Salem Witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. The movie stars Daniel Day- Lewis as John Proctor a farmer and a seemingly kind gentleman in the beginning of the movie but I won't try to spoil anything for those who haven't seen the movie. Miller's play was both interesting and suspenseful but the movie didn't live up to the play as much, to me Daniel Day-Lewis is the essential John Proctor. The movie also other great cast members as well such as Joan Allen (in an Oscar nominated performance) as Porctor's wife Elizabeth, Paul Scofield as Judge Danforth, Winona Ryder as Abigail but to be honest I thought her performance was a little over the top, Bruce Davison as Rev. Samuel Parris, and so many more. Hytner's direction and Miller's Oscar nominated screenplay are well worth watching unfold this is up there with some of the best period films I have ever seen. Though it isn't a great movie it was a near-masterpiece in my view, and Daniel Day-Lewis gave one of the finest performances of his entire career in this movie. This is one of the best movies of 1996.

"The Crucible" stars Daniel Day-Lewis as John Proctor, a man who lives in 17th century Massachusetts. When a young woman (Winona Ryder) begins maliciously accusing villagers of being possessed by supernatural forces, Proctor finds himself the only man of reason within an increasingly deranged town. Based on an Arthur Miller play of the same name, the film was directed by Nicholas Hytner.In 1952, director Elia Kazan, one of Miller's close friends, appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Fearful of being blacklisted from Hollywood, Kazan revealed the names of eight members of the Group Theatre, who in recent years had been fellow members of the Communist Party. Soon after this testimony, Miller travelled to Massachusetts to research the infamous witch trials of 1692. His intention was to write a play that condemned the denunciatory political hysteria of the 1950s, which he aimed to compare to the tryings and hangings of witches in the 1600s. This quickly written play would open at the Beck Theatre on Broadway in early 1953. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, a renowned Marxist, would first adapt the play for the screen in 1957. At its best, Nicholas Hytner's version of "The Crucible" critiques sexual repression, puritanical hysteria and of course silly witch-hunts. As a film about the realities of both McCarthyism and 20th century class conflicts, though, it's mostly lightweight. As is typical of these films ("The Front", "Good Night, and Good Luck", "Guilty by Suspicion" etc), we simply watch as avatars of "enlightened liberals" are patted on the back for, Christ-like, absorbing persecution by irrational nutcases. Because the US never witnessed government-driven anti-Communist purges on the scale of France, Italy, Germany etc (persecution of communists began over a half century before the formation of the USSR), such films never go beyond the hounding of America's left-leaning intelligentsia. That the United States' actions abroad were resulting in the deaths of millions, the couping of countless governments, and the backing, arming and funding of numerous dictators and/or terrorist groups against nationalists, independence movements and left-wing governments, most of whom had no connections to the Soviet Union, never enters the conversation. The more illegal and/or unsavoury actions of the US government at home (projects like COINTELPRO, MINARET and nowadays ECHELON, MUSCULAR etc), are likewise ignored. This is perhaps because McCarthyism also functioned as a big distraction. It kept paranoid and crushed dissidents at home, whilst providing a convenient ideological framework in which conservatives and reactionaries could define and promote muscular "American values" at home and abroad. Politics aside, "The Crucible" is an entertaining film. Daniel Day-Lewis plays well a role that sixty years ago would have gone to a Henry Fonda or Jimmy Stewart - the likable, enlightened "everyman" - and Winona Ryder is good in a role which would make a fool of most other actresses. Despite its subject matter, Hytner maintains a comedic touch, recognising the absurdity underlying his horrific subject matter. 8/10 – See "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold", "The Front" and "Citizenfour".

Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" is a very important allegory that is as relevant today in the post-9/11 world as it was in the 50's during the height of McCarthyism. Yet despite the relevance of the play, it's hard not to view the movie as a letdown. It has Daniel Day-Lewis (perhaps the greatest active actor) in the lead role and the film's voice of reason John Proctor, but even he can seem to make his character wholly believable. It seems as though nearly every character in the film inhabit roles of symbols, rather than real people. The characters act only to underscore Miller's political commentary rather than to deliver a nuanced study of humanity. Characters so quickly devolve into a state of hysteria that it's nearly impossible to believe. Miller and the film's point with this are to show how mob mentality and the basic human instinct to find a culprit in inexplicable circumstances lead people to behave irrationally. But these scenes are completely inorganic and only serve the film's themes, which badly harms its credibility. Despite the seriousness and intended importance of this film, it's hard to take a film seriously that features a dead-pan Daniel Day- Lewis surrounded by dozens of screaming, hysterical individuals. Unfortunately, this film will likely inspire more unintended giggles than deep conversations about human nature.

The Salem witch trials of 1692 have always gripped the American imagination, possibly precisely because they are something so un-American. America prides itself on being the "New World", modern, democratic and rational, yet the witch trials, and the superstitious, intolerant and authoritarian attitudes which produced them, seem very much of the Old World. Indeed, in some respects Americans of this period were more old-fashioned than the Mother Country. The last English witch trials had taken place ten years earlier, and by the 1690s belief in witchcraft was in decline. Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" takes the witch-trials for its subject, but was also written as a critique of McCarthyism. Miller succeeded in his intention to such an extent that it is today difficult for any historian to write about the proceedings of the House Un- American Activities Committee without using the phrase "witch hunt", but whether this has done the play's long-term reputation any good is another matter. McCarthyism may have been a burning issue in the fifties, but today, at least to anyone under the age of eighty, the HUAC seems nearly as remote in time as the witch trials themselves. Moreover, the parallels that Miller draws between Salem and McCarthyism are not, in my opinion, persuasive. And yet I nevertheless regard this as one of the greatest tragedies written in English in the twentieth century. It has taken on a life of its own, independent of the political concerns that prompted it, and become a timeless work which still speaks to us today, not as a satire on a long-dead politician, but as a play about injustice and the struggle against it. Miller's hero, John Proctor, is a classic flawed tragic hero, a man who becomes involved in tragedy because of his human frailties. Proctor, a prosperous farmer, has been unfaithful to his wife Elizabeth with their maidservant, Abigail Williams, but has repented of his adulterous affair and, at his wife's request, dismissed Abigail from his service. These events come back to haunt him. Abigail is the leading figure in a group of girls and young women who begin to accuse their neighbours of witchcraft and who, in the prevailing climate of superstitious Puritanism, are readily believed by the authorities. Abigail, still obsessively in love with Proctor and consumed with hatred for his wife, accuses Elizabeth Proctor, who is arrested. Proctor's attempt to prove his wife's innocence backfires, and he is himself accused and sentenced to death. Told that his life will be spared if he confesses, he faces the dilemma of either saving his life by falsely confessing to a crime, or continuing to maintain his innocence, which means that he will be hanged. A French film, "Les Sorcieres de Salem", was based upon Miller's play in the fifties, but he had to wait another four decades before Hollywood plucked up the courage to follow suit. Miller himself wrote the screenplay, and Proctor is played by his son-in-law Daniel Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis is one of the most reliable screen actors in the world today; I have never seen him give a bad performance, and seldom one which is less than compelling. He is also a versatile actor who has created a gallery of memorable characters all quite different from one another, unlike some actors who play essentially the same character in every film they make. Although he is British and Irish by descent, many of his best-known characters, from Hawkeye in "The Last of the Mohicans" to President Lincoln, have been American, and Proctor is another. Day-Lewis makes him both proud and sensuous, but a man of integrity who will fight to retain that integrity, even at the cost of his life, in a world gone mad.The modern play closest in theme to "The Crucible" is, in my view, Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons", also inspired by real historical events and with a hero who would rather forfeit his life than tell a lie. It is therefore appropriate that Paul Scofield, who famously played Thomas More in the stage and screen versions of "A Man for All Seasons", should also star in "The Crucible". Here he also plays a lawyer named Thomas, but a villain rather than the hero. Judge Thomas Danforth, Proctor's nemesis and the man tasked with investigating the allegations of witchcraft, is a cold, precise, bloodless figure, the sort of lawyer who is less concerned to see justice done than to see that if injustice is done it is done according to the strict letter of the law. A third fine performance comes from Winona Ryder as the spiteful, hysterical and vindictive Abigail, reminding us of just what a fine young actress she could be at her best, even if in recent years her emotionally troubled private life has received more attention than her acting. There are also good contributions from Elizabeth Lawrence as Rebecca Nurse, an old woman who maintains her dignity despite the absurd charges that are brought against her, and Rob Campbell as John Hale, a clergyman who initially supports the witch-hunt but who has enough integrity to change his mind to when he realises that the campaign has got out of hand and become an opportunity to settle old scores. The film was directed by Nicholas Hytner, also responsible for another successful historical drama of the mid-nineties, "The Madness of King George". "The Crucible" is not, however, made in the lavish "heritage cinema" style. In keeping with the Puritan aesthetic of the early Salem settlers and with the dark events which constitute its subject-matter, the look of the film is restrained and sombre. Hytner has produced a fitting adaptation of this great play. 8/10