The Crucible Details

Arthur Miller's emotionally raw play about suspected witchcraft in 17th-century Massachusetts — the author and screenwriter's veiled attack on the McCarthy-inspired communist witch-hunts of the 1950s — is here brilliantly brought to the screen by director Nicholas Hytner (The Madness of King George). Daniel Day-Lewis is characteristically intense as the married man caught in the middle, but the real fireworks come from Winona Ryder, as the wicked young girl whose manipulative behaviour is the story's catalyst, and Paul Scofield, who is a commanding presence as the trial's judge. Hytner maintains a believable period flavour throughout and successfully evokes the stifling atmosphere of fear and suspicion in Salem — the film's final third, as reputations are ruined and scapegoats are sought, is absolutely electrifying.

Powerful historical drama of the power of superstition when allied to the processes of an inquisition, though it has lost some of its contemporary relevance along the way.