''The Crucible'' (french: Les Sorcières de Salem, german: Die Hexen von Salem or ''Hexenjagd'') is a 1957 joint

Franco Franco may refer to: Name * Franco (name) * Francisco Franco (1892–1975), Spanish general and dictator of Spain from 1939 to 1975 * Franco Luambo (1938–1989), Congolese musician, the "Grand Maître" Prefix * Franco, a prefix used when ref ...

East German East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

film production directed by

Raymond Rouleau Raymond Rouleau (4 June 1904 – 11 December 1981) was a Belgian actor and film director. He appeared in more than 40 films between 1928 and 1979. He also directed 22 films between 1932 and 1981. Rouleau studied at the Royal Conservatory of B ...

with a screenplay adapted by

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...

from the 1953 play ''

The Crucible ''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 ...

'', by

Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are ''All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...

Plot

1692,

Salem, Massachusetts Salem ( ) is a historic coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, located on the North Shore (Massachusetts), North Shore of Greater Boston. Continuous settlement by Europeans began in 1626 with English colonists. Salem would become one of the ...

. John Proctor is the only member in the town's assembly who resists the attempts of the rich to gain more wealth at the expense of the poor farmers, thus incurring the wrath of deputy governor Danforth. Proctor's sternly puritanical wife, Elizabeth, is sick and has not shared his bed for months, and he was seduced by his maid, Abigail. When he ends his affair with her, Abigail and several other local girls turn to slave Tituba. Reverend Parris catches the girls in the forest as they partake in what appears to be witchcraft. Abigail and the rest deny it, saying that they have been bewitched. A wave of hysteria engulfs the town, and Danforth uses the girls' accusations to instigate a series of trials, during which his political enemies are accused of heresy and executed. When Abigail blames Elizabeth Proctor, the latter rejects John's pleas to defraud Abigail as an adulteress. Eventually, both Proctors are put on trial and refuse to sign a confession. The townspeople rebel, but not before John is hanged with other defendants; his pregnant wife has been spared. Elizabeth tells the angry crowd to let Abigail live.

Cast

* Simone Signoret as Elizabeth Proctor *

Yves Montand Ivo Livi (), better known as Yves Montand (; 13 October 1921 – 9 November 1991), was an Italian-French actor and singer. Early life Montand was born Ivo Livi in Monsummano Terme, Italy, to Giovanni Livi, a broom manufacturer, Ivo held stron ...

as John Proctor * Chantal Gozzi as Fancy Proctor *

Mylène Demongeot Mylène Demongeot (born Marie-Hélène Demongeot; 29 September 1935 – 1 December 2022) was a French film, television and theatre actress and author with a career spanning seven decades and more than 100 credits in French, Italian, English an ...

Abigail Williams Abigail Williams (born c. 1681, date of death unknown) 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 eve ...

Alfred Adam Alfred Roger Adam (4 April 1908 – 7 May 1982) was a French stage and film character actor, who usually played weak or villainous roles. Selected filmography *'' Speedway'' (1929) - Doctor (uncredited) *'' La Kermesse Héroïque'' (1935) - Jos ...

Thomas Putnam Thomas Putnam ( – , 1699) was a member of the Putnam family and a resident of Salem Village (present-day Danvers, Massachusetts) and a significant accuser in the notorious 1692 Salem witch trials. His father, Lt. Thomas Putnam Sr. (1615–1 ...

Françoise Lugagne Françoise Lugagne (1914–1991) was a French stage, film and television actress. She was married to the Belgian actor Raymond Rouleau and appeared alongside him in the 1945 fashion house drama ''Paris Frills ''Paris Frills'' (french: Falbalas) i ...

as Jane Putnam *

Thomas Danforth Thomas Danforth (baptized November 20, 1623 – November 5, 1699) was a politician, magistrate, and landowner in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A conservative Puritan, he served for many years as one of the colony's councilors and magistrates, ...

Pierre Larquey Pierre Larquey (10 July 1884 – 17 April 1962) was a French film actor. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1913 and 1962. Born in Cénac, Gironde, France, he died in Maisons-Laffitte at the age of 77. Selected filmography * ''Patr ...

Francis Nurse Rebecca Nurse (February 13, 1621 – July 19, 1692) was a woman who was accused of witchcraft and executed by hanging in New England during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. She was fully exonerated fewer than twenty years later. She was the wife ...

* Marguerite Coutan-Lambert as

Rebecca Nurse Rebecca Nurse (February 13, 1621 – July 19, 1692) was a woman who was accused of witchcraft and executed by hanging in New England during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. She was fully exonerated fewer than twenty years later. She was the wife ...

Jean Debucourt Jean Debucourt (19 January 1894 – 22 March 1958) was a French stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films between 1920 and 1958. Selected filmography * '' The Little Thing'' (1923) * ''Jean Chouan'' (1926) * '' Madame Récam ...

Samuel Parris Samuel Parris (1653February 27, 1720) 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. Life and career Samuel Parris, son of T ...

* Darling Legitimus as

Tituba Tituba Indian was an enslaved woman who was one of the first to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693. She was brought to colonial Massachusetts from Barbados by Samuel Parris, the minister of Salem Village. She w ...

Michel Piccoli Jacques Daniel Michel Piccoli (27 December 1925 – 12 May 2020) was a French actor, producer and film director with a career spanning 70 years. He was lauded as one of the greatest French character actors of his generation who played a wide vari ...

as James Putnam *

Gerd Michael Henneberg Gerd Michael Henneberg (14 July 1922 – 1 January 2011) was a German actor and theater director. Biography Gerd Henneberg's father, Richard, was a theater director. After the young Heeneberg took private acting classes, he debuted on stage at a ...

as Joseph Herrick *

Yves Brainville Yves Brainville (8 March 1914 – 16 November 1993) was a French film and television actor.Hayward p.245 Selected filmography * ''Entrée des artistes'' (1938) - Sylvestre * ''Accord final'' (1938) - Chenal - l'ami de Georges * ''Eduardo VII'' ...

as John Hale * Pascale Petit as Mary Warren * Véronique Nordey as

Mercy Lewis Mercy Lewis (fl. 1692) 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. Early life Lewis and her family were refugees ...

* Jeanne Fusier-Gir as Martha Corey *

Jean Gaven Jean Gaven (16 January 1918 – 5 May 2014) was a French actor. He appeared in more than sixty films between 1945 and 1996. Life and career Born in Saint-Rome-de-Cernon, France on January 16, 1922, Gaven began acting sometime after the end of Wo ...

as Peter Corey * Aribert Grimmer as Giles Corey * Alexandre Rignault as Samuel Willard * Pâquerette (Marguerite Jeanne Martine Puech) as

Sarah Good Sarah Good (, 1653 – , 1692)Contemporary records commonly used the Julian calendar and the Annunciation Style of enumerating months and years. By the Gregorian calendar and using modern style dating, all of the witch trial events in this artic ...

* Gérard Darrieu as Ezekiel Cheever * François Joux as Judge * Sabine Thalbach as Kitty * Ursula Körbs as Wollit * Hans Klering as Field

Production

Jean-Paul Sartre began writing the script in late 1955, during what author David Caute defined as "the height of his rapprochement with the Soviet Union". He was inspired by the success of

Marcel Aymé Marcel Aymé (29 March 1902 – 14 October 1967) was a French novelist and playwright, who also wrote screenplays and works for children. Biography Marcel André Aymé was born in Joigny, in the Burgundy region of France, the youngest of si ...

's French-language adaptation of Miller's ''The Crucible'', titled ''Les sorcières de Salem'', which was staged in Paris' Sarah Bernhardt Theater, starring Simone Signoret as Elizabeth Proctor. Sartre later said he was moved to write his adaptation because "the play showed John Proctor persecuted, but no one knows why... His death seems like a purely ethical act, rather than one of freedom, that is undertaken in order to resist the situation effectively. In Miller's play... Each of us can see what he wants, each public will find in it confirmation of its own attitude... Because the real political and social implications of the witch-hunt don't appear clearly." The screenplay was 300 pages long. Sartre's version was different from the original play in many ways; Elizabeth saves Abigail from lynching and the townspeople rise up against

, who becomes the chief antagonist. The film was one of four major Franco-East German co-productions made during the late 1950s - the others were '' Till Ulenspiegel's Adventures'', ''

Les Misérables ''Les Misérables'' ( , ) is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. In the English-speaking world, the novel is usually referred to by its origin ...

'' and ''Les Arrivistes''. The Democratic Republic's government authorized the DEFA studio to collaborate with companies outside the Eastern Bloc in order to gain access to Western audiences, thus bypassing the limitations imposed by West Germany's Hallstein Doctrine; eventually, they intended their films to reach also the public in the Federal Republic. The French, on their part, were interested in reducing costs by filming in East Germany. Principal photography took place in DEFA's

Babelsberg Studios Babelsberg Film Studio (german: Filmstudio Babelsberg), located in Potsdam-Babelsberg outside Berlin, Germany, is the second oldest large-scale film studio in the world only preceded by the Danish Nordisk Film (est. 1906), producing films since ...

from August to mid-October 1956, with additional shooting in Paris during early November.Susan Hayward. ''French Costume Drama of the 1950s: Fashioning Politics in Film.'' . pp. 83-85. Pascale Petit made her debut in the film. She was discovered working as a hairdress by

who recommended her to her husband

. The sets and costumes were designed by Lila de Nobili.

Reception

''Les Sorcières de Salem'' sold 1,686,749 tickets. For their appearance in it, Signoret won the 1957 BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress and

was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer in the same year. In the 1957

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival ( cs, Mezinárodní filmový festival Karlovy Vary) is a film festival held annually in July in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. The Karlovy Vary Festival is one of the oldest in the world and has becom ...

, the Best Actor Award was given to "all actors of ''Les Sorcières de Salem'' in collective, and especially to

." ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' film critic

Bosley Crowther Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. (July 13, 1905 – March 7, 1981) was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for ''The New York Times'' for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though his ...

wrote: "out of ''The Crucible''...

and

have got a powerful and compelling film... For now Mr. Miller's somewhat cramped and peculiarly parochial account... comes forth as a sort of timeless drama... This is a persistently absorbing film." ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' magazine's reviewer commented that "''Witches of Salem'' is a foredoomed but fascinating attempt... But it hardly helps the scriptwriter's case... When he sums the whole story up as an early American instance of class warfare." Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka, who edited and annotated Sartre's writings, wrote that Sartre introduced a strong element of communist

class struggle Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor. The form ...

into his adaptation of Miller's play, especially by turning Danforth from merely sanctimonious to a calculated villain who pulls the strings behind the trial, while making the character of Abigail more complex and consequently, almost sympathetic. In the introduction to the 2010 edition of ''The Crucible'', editor Susan C. W. Abbotson described the film's plot as a "conflict between capitalists and heroic Marxists", writing that "Miller felt the Marxist references were too heavy-handed. Most critics agreed." Abbotson also commented that "Sartre changed the play's theme... His version becomes despiritualized... As it desires to present us the heroic representatives of Communism." In another occasion, Miller told that he disliked the film because it "reduced man to a digit in the socialist dialectic." According to Susan Hayward, the picture's release shortly after the crushing of the

1956 Hungarian Uprising The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...

by the Soviets caused several critics to attack it as a work of pro-communists, who resisted

Joseph McCarthy Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican United States Senate, U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarth ...

and the French War in Algeria but supported the Kremlin. Hayward, however, viewed it as standing in favor of the right to exercise free speech in general.

wrote: " Mylene Demongeot, was n ''The Crucible''truly beautiful and so bursting with real sexuality as to become a generalized force whose effects on the community transcended herself."

Releases

For decades, general exploitation of the film was blocked at Arthur Miller's request, as Miller, who had been granted partial distribution rights, claimed to disapprove of Sartre's adaptation, endorsing instead the 1996 film directed by

Nicholas Hytner Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner (; born 7 May 1956) is an English theatre director, film director, and film producer. He was previously the Artistic Director of London's National Theatre. His major successes as director include '' Miss Saigon'', ''T ...

. However, rumors often mentioned that Miller had a grudge against Yves Montand, because Montand had an affair with Miller's then-wife

Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...

during production of '' Let's Make Love'' (1960). This theory was later confirmed by cast member Mylène Demongeot. French studio

Pathé Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest film equipment ...

was ultimately able to purchase the stake owned by Arthur Miller's estate in the distribution rights, and a restored version of the film was released on home video in France in 2017.

References

External links

* * *
''The Crucible''
at

Variety Distribution Variety Distribution is an Italian-based film distribution company. It distributes Italian films worldwide, produced from the 1930s onward. History Variety Distribution (formerly Variety Film and Variety Communications) has been in the film p ...

*
Die Hexen von Salem
' on filmportal.de. *
Die Hexen von Salem
' on defa.de. *
Die Hexen von Salem
' on 2001.de. {{DEFAULTSORT:Crucible, The (1957) 1957 films 1950s historical drama films French historical drama films German historical drama films East German films 1950s French-language films French films based on plays Films about capital punishment Films about lawyers Films directed by Raymond Rouleau Films set in the 1690s Films set in Massachusetts Salem witch trials in fiction Films about witchcraft Drama films based on actual events Films about miscarriage of justice Works by Jean-Paul Sartre Films about McCarthyism Films set in the Thirteen Colonies Films scored by Georges Auric Films produced by Raymond Borderie Films shot at Babelsberg Studios 1957 drama films 1950s French films 1950s German films