Volume 44, Number 1 · January 9, 1997
Bewitched
By Edmund S. Morgan
The Crucible
film by Nicholas Hytner, screenplay by Arthur Miller
The Crucible Screenplay
by Arthur Miller
Penguin, 96 pp., $12.95 (paper)
To make a successful film from a successful play is probably much more difficult than making one from scratch, just as any carpenter will tell you that it is more difficult to restore an old house than to build a comparable new one. The constraints imposed on the screenwriter, producer, and director by scenes, language, and actions designed for the stage can never quite be ignored, and they can cripple the action of a film. The difficulty is magnified when the play is as familiar as The Crucible, its structure all too firmly imprinted on the minds of those making the film and of the audience they are making it for. Arthur Miller, who wrote the screenplay himself, and Nicholas Hytner, who directed it, knew what they were up against. Miller tried 'to put the play out of mind as much as possible and proceed as though it had never existed.' And Hytner, who felt 'as if I was asking Shakespeare for amendments to King Lear,' nevertheless found Miller quick to 'refashion his screenplay as I strove to visualize it image by image.'
Review, 3276 words
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