The witches of Salem

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Movie
German title The witches of Salem
Original title Les sorcières de Salem
Country of production France , GDR
original language French
Publishing year 1957
length 145 minutes
Age rating FSK 12 (previously 16)
Rod
Director Raymond Rouleau
script Jean-Paul Sartre
production Raymond Borderie
music Georges Auric
Hanns Eisler
camera Claude Renoir
cut Marguerite Renoir
occupation

The Witches of Salem ( French Les sorcières de Salem) is a feature film by Belgian director Raymond Rouleau from 1957. The film, which was made in the DEFA studios in Babelsberg as a co-production between the GDR and France, is a film adaptation of the play witch hunt (also the German film title) by Arthur Miller . The script adaptation was written by the French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre .

action

Salem , in Massachusetts , in 1692. The Scottish-English Puritans lead a difficult colonist life under strict religious rules. The revival preacher Samuel Parris in Salem has the impression of moral decline and diminishing influence on the colonists. In his sermons he tries to activate the fear of the devil in believers instead of talking about the love of God. John Proctor criticized this publicly during the sermon. John Proctor is seen as an advocate for the poorer settlers. He lives with his wife Elisabeth, his little daughter and two maids on a remote farm near Salem. Elisabeth is strictly religious and strictly adheres to all religious commandments. Her daughter suffers from this and she forbids her to play with her doll on Sundays. Her husband also suffers from this. Since she regards sexual intercourse as a sin, she despises her body and eludes her husband. He has already satisfied his physical desires twice with his maid, 16-year-old Abigail Williams, the niece of Pastor Parris. Abigail began to love John, to desire him too. Rejected by Elisabeth, he ends up with Abigail a third time. But this time Mary Warren brings the other, younger maid, Elisabeth. She casts her husband out of the bedroom, but remains silent about the deadly crime of adultery. She expels Abigail from the court, who goes back to her uncle, the pastor. She swears death for Elisabeth, she would like to become the wife of John Proctor. He loves his wife and suffers from his weakness to be seduced by the beautiful body of Abigail. He reveals everything to his wife.

Tituba, the colored housekeeper of Pastor Parris, tries to comfort people with magical, perhaps African, rites. She would also like to help the pastor's 12-year-old daughter Betty, who suffers from the relentless and loveless regiment of her father and longs for her dead mother. On full moon nights, Tituba and some girls who have unfulfilled wishes gather in the forest, where they perform their archaic dance and incantation rites. Abigail, who wants Elisabeth to die, Betty, the pastor's daughter, who wants to meet her mother again, and Thomas Putnam, the daughter of Ann the wealthiest in Salem, are among them. Ann is sickly and has frequent nosebleeds. Her mother Jane convinced her that this was a result of the work of witches. She had already lost several children and with this assumption rejects the serious reproach of the Puritan society, which claims that illnesses are a result of sinful life.

The pastor witnesses this happening and takes Betty home with him. She is beside herself and has a fit from which only Tituba can deliver. For the pastor this is clearly a sign of the work of the devil and his witches. He gets an expert in driving out devils. But he cannot confirm this, he does not find the signs mentioned in the relevant literature (white eyes). But, as was customary in such cases, he had notified Governor Danforth, assuming that he would not come. But Danforth comes and sees witch hunt as a sacred duty and at the same time an opportunity to discipline the settlers.

Thus begins a series of witch trials, to which women on the fringes of society first fall victim, including Tituba, but then more and more respected people. Children, including Abigail, Mary Warren, Betty and Ann, are always used to convict the accused: The children get into psychogenic attacks when they approach them. The defendants found guilty will not be executed if they confess and give other names.

Elisabeth suspects that Abigail will drag her before the witch trial. John also sees through what is happening, especially since he witnessed the nightly bustle of Tituba. But it prevents him from objecting to other settlers who ask him as a spokesman and from signing a joint paper because he himself feels guilty as an adulterer. Elisabeth confesses to him her physical longing for him. At one point, she wants him to look at her with the desire that she saw in his eyes when she surprised him with Abigail. She opens up to his physical desire.

It will come as Elisabeth foresaw. Now John has to take action to save his wife. He wants to prove to the judges that these charges, based on children's testimonies, are false by getting his maid, Mary, to tell the truth. This is not convincing because Mary cannot perform the usual psychogenic attack and fainting under orders. This required the climate of mass hysteria. So he confesses that he is an adulterer himself and therefore, out of hatred and jealousy, Abigail has an interest in the killing of Elisabeth and therefore wrongly accused her. But the proof does not succeed because Elisabeth does not want to publicly confess her husband's adultery. It's the only time in her life that she lies. So John is arrested as a witcher.

Thomas Putnam benefits from the witch hunts because he can buy the victims' homesteads cheaply. So he is initially not interested in supporting the initiative of his brother James, who as a merchant is suffering economically from the decline of economy and life as a result of the spreading witch trials and subsequent new denunciations in the colony. But the child Ann, after seeing the respected colonist Giles Corey being crushed by the laying of stones to extort a confession, has a severe psychogenic attack and now accuses her father, Thomas, of witchcraft. Nobody is safe anymore.

This drives Thomas Putnam, as the richest and most influential citizen of Salem, to support his brother's initiative to end the witch hunt. But at the conspiratorial meeting of the colonists of Salem, the group of the rich wants to proceed via a letter of protest to the governor. The poorer colonists also want to save the people who are to be executed the next morning: John Procter and two women, one who was highly regarded, even holy, and Martha Corey, who was educated and could read. The rich don't care. So the poorer colonists, who form the majority, now decide themselves to forcibly prevent the execution in the morning.

John Proctor is afraid of death the night before his execution. Abigail tries to get him to confess his guilt. She wants a future with him. John writes a confession. But then the captured Elisabeth is also allowed to stay with him. For the time being, Elizabeth does not face death because she is pregnant. She should also persuade him to confess. But she confesses her love for him, her pride in being his wife, contrary to Abigail's lie that she regrets it. This way John loses his fear of death. He knows that he has to counter this terrible madness of the witch hunt by not submitting himself and confessing as a witch. He has to do this if only to avoid stabbing the others who oppose it. So he tears up his confession.

The gallows was moved to the fortified courtyard because the governor had been told that the colonists were planning to prevent the execution. Because of the upright demeanor of the women and John Proctors, who are all highly respected citizens, Pastor Parris now realizes that they must be innocent. But the governor doesn't want to overturn the verdict because that would call the whole court into question. He persists even if he had been wrong. He apologizes to the victims in this case.

The execution follows. All delinquents despise this pastor Parris and do not want his cross before death. The rebelling settlers stand in front of the gate and do not reach the execution site in time. But Abigail, when she sees the death of John, whom she loves, opens the gate. The settlers rush in, quickly cut the dead off the gallows and pursue Danforth, who flees into the house. You free Elisabeth. When they want to lynch Abigail, Elisabeth stands in front of them. She says Abigail only loved John Proctor after all. All settlers carry the victims of these judicial murders to their graves in a procession. The madness of the witch hunt ( Salem witch trials ) is over.

History of origin

Arthur Miller was inspired by the Salem witch trials in the early 1950s . With the play he processed his own experiences. In the course of the McCarthy era , the writer, charged in June 1956 by the American congressional committee to combat “un-American activity” , was sentenced to a fine and one year probation in 1957 for “disregard of Congress” . Miller was acquitted the following year. His play premiered on Broadway in New York in January 1953 and won two Tony Awards .

The first film version of Miller's play was co-produced by DEFA . In order to preserve its international status, the GDR film studio entered into co-productions with French companies in the 1950s. In addition to Die Hexen von Salem , Gérard Philipes and Joris Ivens ' Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel (1956) and Jean-Paul Le Chanois ' Hugo film Die Elenden (1958) were made. The acting couple Simone Signoret and Yves Montand , who had previously performed the Proctor couple on the theater stage, were engaged as the main actors . Cinematographer Claude Renoir worked with an intense close-up style and high-contrast light-dark lighting.

Reviews

The American critic Bosley Crowther ( The New York Times ) praised The Witches of Salem despite some lengths as a "persistently captivating film" and referred to the performance of the actors. "Perhaps the most striking portrayal is that of Yves Montand as a powerless Puritan husband ... But Simone Signoret follows closely behind, as a strict Puritan woman whose inherent sense of justice is greater than her innate jealousy," says Crowther. Mylène Demongeot was "brilliantly fluid and really unsettling." The British Times emphasized the "slow, brooding intensive" way of working of director Raymond Rouleau, which would particularly benefit the scenes with Abigail and Elizabeth. “Mademoiselle Mylene Demongeot doesn't need more than a smile on the corner of her mouth to let it be clear that she will denounce Elizabeth as a witch… Mademoiselle Simone Signoret opposes silence and a passive resignation that are not enough to cause tragedy prevent."

According to the Federal German film service , the film does not succeed in "shedding the historical costume and moving from the exemplary to the generally valid." Even Sartre's script does not find a clear answer to the abuse and delusion of religious power and existence over a piece . The play of the main actors Simone Signoret and Yves Montand was praised, for which they deserved "unlimited admiration" . "Almost without transition and with the most economical means, she (Signoret) shapes her image from the changing tension of inner stages of change ..."

A prison scene inserted by Sartre, which does not appear in Miller's play, aroused displeasure. In a monologue, the convicted Proctor accuses people's representatives and church representatives. Critics from Christian circles thought The Witches of Salem were only suitable for “mature adults” and believed they could see a “clear anti-church tendency in the spirit of liberalism” .

Awards

The Salem Witches competed at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 1957 . Although Rouleau's film was left behind in the award of the main prize compared to the Indian contribution Jagte Raho by Shanbhu Mitra , Yves Montand , Simone Signoret and Mylène Demongeot were awarded the actor's prize. A year later, Simone Signoret won the British Film Academy Awards for the second time since 1953 for the best foreign actress . Mylène Demongeot received a nomination for Best Young Actress .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Witches of Salem . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 16485 / V). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ See Arthur Miller . In: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 25/2005 from June 25, 2005 (accessed on August 26, 2009 via Munzinger Online)
  3. ↑ a b The Witches of Salem . In: The large TV feature film film lexicon (CD-ROM). Directmedia Publ., 2006. ISBN 978-3-89853-036-1
  4. ↑ a b See review in film-dienst 22/1958 (accessed on August 25, 2009 via Munzinger Online)
  5. ↑ Review by Bosley Crowther in the New York Times, December 9, 1958
  6. ↑ See M. Sartre Adapts The Crucible for the Screen Impressive Version of Mr. Miller's Play. In: The Times, September 2, 1957, ed. 53935, p. 3