The Crucible (1996 film)

Early one morning in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, a group of young village girls meet in the woods with a Barbadian slave named Tituba, attempting to conjure love spells for certain men in their town. One of the girls, Abigail Williams, kills a chicken and drinks its blood, wishing for John Proctor's wife Elizabeth to die. Abigail's uncle, Reverend Samuel Parris, discovers them. As the girls run away, his daughter Betty collapses unconscious.

Later that night, John and Abigail are alone in a bedroom when Abigail begins to flirt with John making her and John both have romantic feelings for each other, shortly after that, they have sex before going to bed.

Parris questions Abigail about the events in the woods; Betty will not awaken, nor will Thomas and Ann Putnam's daughter Ruth, who was also dancing. This upsets Mrs. Putnam hard as she previously had seven other children who died at childbirth. Giles Corey, who suspects that the children are just acting out, and John Proctor, with whom Abigail had an affair and whose wife she wants dead, also visit the Parris household. Abigail still loves Proctor, but Proctor has realized his mistake and left her. Believing Betty and Ruth to be demonically possessed, the Putnams and Reverend Parris 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 other girls begin naming other women whom they "saw" with the devil.

John tries to forget about the night he had sex with Abigail and regrets his mistake he made that night wanting to get back with his wife John decides to get vengeance on Abigail for what happened that night.

John, determined not to give his former lover her vengeance, insists that his servant, Mary Warren, one of the "afflicted" girls, testify in court that the witchcraft was faked. Although frightened of Abigail, she eventually agrees. In the court, Francis Nurse gives a list of names of people vouching for the accused; the judges order that all on the list be arrested and brought in for questioning. Giles Corey insists that when Ruth Putnam accused Rebecca Nurse, Mr. Putnam was heard to tell Ruth that she had won him a "fine gift of land". Corey refuses to identify who heard this remark, and the judges order Corey's arrest. Meanwhile, Mary Warren insists she only thought she saw spirits but the other girls later cow her into recanting. Elizabeth Proctor says she is pregnant and will be spared from death until the baby is born, but John insists on charging the girls with false witness.

The other girls are called in and asked if they were lying about the witchcraft but cause a commotion, screaming that Mary Warren is bewitching them. To demonstrate Abigail's complicity, John confesses to had 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 accusation to protect her reputation, so Elizabeth is called in to verify it. However, 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. Although John correctly believes that they were pretending, as he had previously accused, the girls create another commotion, running 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 Proctor is to be hanged, Reverend Hale confronts Abigail at the now-abandoned homes of the victims whom she testified against. Abigail attempts to convince the court that Reverend Hale's wife is also a witch (because Hale was the lone official in the court who doubted her claims); however, this plot backfires as the judges doubt her, as they consider a minister's wife to be pure. Eventually, the girls become outcasts and Abigail steals Reverend Parris' money to catch a ship 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 boat we'll meet again, but in Hell". On the eve of John's hanging, Parris, fearing that his execution will cause riots in Salem directed at him, allows John to meet with Elizabeth to see if she can make him "confess" to 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. Before he, Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey finish reciting the Lord's Prayer, they are hanged to die.

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.

The movie was not a box office success,[2] making only $7,343,114 in the United States.[3]

• The Crucible at IMDb
• The Crucible at AllMovie
• The Crucible at Box Office Mojo
• The Crucible at Rotten Tomatoes