Parris (Bruce Davison), Abigail attempts to revive the liaison with John, but he resolutely refuses, rededicating himself to his family. After the revelry by the cauldron, witnessed by the local Rev. Proctor (Daniel Day-Lewis), an industrious farmer, had an illicit affair with Abigail when she worked in his house, but when his wife Elizabeth (Joan Allen) got wind of it, Abigail was tossed out. They soon are wallowing in trancelike reveries, and one young lady in particular, Abigail Williams (Winona Ryder), gets so carried away that she smears blood on her face and calls for the death of the wife of one John Proctor. Without identifying time or place, director Nicholas Hytner’s picture begins with a group of teenage Puritan girls secretly gathering in a glade around a boiling pot presided over by a young black woman. parallel may be seen most closely in the resurgent intolerance of certain religious movements, which foster the sort of “either you’re with us or against us” attitude that precipitates the tragic consequences of the playwright’s story.

Although Miller’s historically based drama has proved itself applicable to just about any time period and geopolitical setting, it was admittedly inspired as an allegory about the anti-Communist government witch hunts of the post-war period, in which many careers were ruined and disrupted and friend was pitted against friend in a frenzy of paranoia, finger-pointing and ideological extremism.

The crucible 1996 download