In The Crucible, Arthur Miller's classic 1953 play, ostensibly about the infamous 17th century witch-hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, but actually a trenchant indictment of the evils perpetrated by Senator McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s, director Nicholas Hytner (The Madness of King George) with imput from Miller himself, has fashioned a relentless, suspenseful, and unnervingly prescient drama of collective evil and personal conscience. As the morally compromised Salem farmer whose life is shattered by the vengeful plotting of his scorned mistress, both Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder etch indelible performances. For the record, the play's only other screen incarnation was a Jean Paul Sartre-penned adaptation which Raymond Rouleau helmed in France in 1957 toplining Yves Montand and Simone Signoret.
