I admire Hawthorne's book very much. It is not a 'novel' as we now think of novels. Instead I've enjoyed it for decades as a book to be considered in three or four page bursts around bedtime. I don't really believe guilt is the foundation of society like Hawthorne did, but it's still a fine meditation on guilt and hypocrisy. Hawthorne loves language and introspection and is not overly concerned with plot developments and pacing. It's the quality I like about the book.This version of the novel then is absolutely true to the source, It has a slow, deliberate pace and is weighted with ponderous, heavy import. It marches inexorably to a guilt-fueled, hopeless, agonized conclusion. Every filmed narrative ever made is not about your entertainment. It's 4 hours long and that seems to be the perfect length to get Hawthorne's tone across. Meg Foster is spot-on as the iron-willed morally-superior scapegoat of a retched Puritan town. Arthur Dimmesdale remains one of the most irritating protagonists in all of literature. John Heard (he of no eyebrows) plays the unsympathetic religious hypocrite; His Dimmesdale is quite the self-pitying drama queen. I used to think Heard was way over the top; now I think he's only purple here and there. Kevin Conway also chews on the scenery. The lady portraying the governor's mother (and a witch) is perfectly cast; even her bodily movements are finely nuanced. The only elements that date this are the poor atmospheric effects, and the junky credits. The videography is crisp, except when slow-mo is attempted. The score is again right on the money; ominous and simple.A note on the DVD: There is absolutely no reason after 30 years to preserve the preview & recap materials in the exact place they were first viewed when broadcast (in segments) on TV, once upon a time in 1979. They intrude at the start of each new hour of this production, and prevent more people from taking the movie for a spin. The DVD would easily fit onto one disc if they dumped all that stuff. It's just not relevant to the DVD format. And we now have a devoted place for behind the scenes featurettes. It's called the "Extra Materials" section. Hawthorne interrupts the narrative only once with his Custom House sketch. Here they do it 4 times (the start of each night's episode). That was not his intent.Still, there is no finer film version of the book. And it could be argued that this is the cleanest book to film xfer ever.

We have been watching this movie in English as we read the book, and this is probably one of the most awful movies I have seen. The camera is shaky and looks homedone, the acting is horrible, and the background music, when present, does not fit the theme. The funniest part about the movie is when the comet and its sci-fi music flashes across the sky looking like the worst special effects I have ever seen. The extras do look lost, and the after a minute or two of the babies crying, I wanted to put it (or myself) out of its misery. It follows the book really well, but it seems that the budget of the book was probably higher than the movie. (Did they really have a 100 dollar budget? Because that's what it seems like...) The acting isn't good either - I completely cracked up when Chillingworth did his little dance after looking into Dimmesdale's shirt. Lastly, Meg's eyes are very freaky. I do not recommend this movie.

I love Hawthorne's novel. And this miniseries is VERY faithful to the novel. But if what you're looking for is a faithful rendition of the book, don't waste your time with this...JUST READ THE BOOK. This film is pointless: it brings absolutely nothing new to the tale, and it's not at all interesting to watch. The actors evidently have no idea what to do with the script; perhaps they have trouble expressing feeling with archaic dialogue, or perhaps it was because of incompetent direction. The director plods through most of the film with basic camera shots (there's nothing wrong with that, of course, so long as what you're watching is interesting [which in this case it is not]); at a few scattered points, however, he makes an attempt to do something artsy - like when Dimmesdale whips himself and when Hester is standing on the scaffold in the nocturnal scene - but these shots not only look out-of-place with the rest of the film but one gets the impression that they were put there just to show off rather than to really say something. Perhaps they (and the rest of the film) would have come off better if the production values had been more than nil, which I can only assume they must have been.

This filmed version, of uneven production quality but sound performances, takes the slow and reflective course of Hawthorne's novel seriously and develops Hawthorne's themes with some maturity. Opinions may vary, but I found all the lead performances convincing -- a difficult job, given that they have somehow to encompass four different sets of sensibilities: those of the Puritan era in which the film is set, those of Hawthorne's 1850 Romanticism, the aesthetics of 1979 when the production was released, and those of the viewer in 2000. Parts of Meg Foster's performance are genuinely haunting. The piece is admittedly a bit dated, its filming techniques are a bit plodding, and its dialogue (inevitably) sounds a bit stilted. But it has the gumption to take on the dark and difficult issues the novel raises. For that it deserves a great deal of credit, and is worth viewing.