English Advanced Year 12 - The Crucible + related texts: Adaptations

1996 Film Adaptation (Director Nicholas Hytner)

Arguably the most well-known of adaptations, Arthur Miller wrote the screenplay for the 1996 film version starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Joan Allen and Winona Ryder. The movie in its entirety is below:

Notes on the 1996 film adaptation starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder:

The film adaptation was mostly filmed on location on Hog Island, Massachusetts, where the village of Salem was recreated. Day-Lewis even build the farmhouse the Proctors lived in, and learned to use many of the farm tools that his character would have employed in his work. Many of the actors, including Day-Lewis, chose not to bathe over the course of the month-long shoot to better resemble the lifestyle of the people of Salem in 1692. While the film’s script closely resembles the play, Miller did cut some lines. The courtroom scene is shorter, and the ending confrontation between Proctor and Danforth is as well. Miller also restored some of the cut second scene of the second act between John and Abigail in the woods. The film concludes with the execution of Rebecca Nurse and John Proctor, among others. As they die, the characters recite the Lord’s Prayer – proof to the Puritans that they could not be witches.

2014 The Old Vic Stage Production (Director Yaël Farber)

The Old Vic's 2014 stage production of The Crucible was directed by Yaël Farber and given a cinema release in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Ireland. Starring Richard Armitage, Harry Attwell, and Samantha Colley, the director's cuts are below:

The Crucible - The Opera!

The Crucible was produced as an opera in the English language in 1961. It was written by Robert Ward who won both the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics Circle Citation for his work. The University of British Columbia's production of the opera may be viewed in its entirety here.

2016 Broadway Adaptation (Director Ivo van Hove)

Ivo van Hove directed the 2016 Broadway production of The Crucible, starring Ben Whishaw, Sophie Okonedo and Saoirse Ronan. The trailer for the production is below:

1957 film adaptation (Director Raymond Rouleau)

The first film adaptation of The Crucible was a French-East German production directed by Raymond Rouleau, who joined forces with Jean-Paul Sartre to adapt the screenplay. Even though the film received critical and commercial success, Arthur Miller was not a fan, and blocked the film’s general exploitation because he disapproved of Sartre’s adaptation (ultimately writing his own film adaptation in 1996). Pathé, a French studio, purchased his partial distribution rights, and the film was released on home video in 2017.