Word: proctoral
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...eventual arrest of the salesmen was brought about when a Holworthy boy, in an effort to find someone to share the cost of a subscription, burst into his proctor's room. The proctor immediately summoned the Yard policemen, who after questioning the boys called Cambridge police. The orphans were taken away to jail at about 6:15 Saturday, but were almost immediately bailed out by an agent of the subscription company, who maintained that all the magazines purchased will be delivered...
...fears of the people. The political overtones of the play were obvious (which is probably why Hollywood has never attempted to make a movie of it), but the play was more than a mere social pamphlet. It centered on the moral struggle of its farmer-hero John Proctor, who, accused of "consorting with the Devil," chooses to die rather than confess to a crime he has not committed...
...adapted for the movies by Jean-Paul Sartre, the Salem witch trials emerge as a plot by the aristocracy to chastize and control the stiff-necked rabble of the town. Thus, in the movie version, Proctor chooses to die for a cause rather than to preserve his own integrity. This distortion, coupled with an over-simplification of the motives of each character, considerably lessens the dramatic power of Miller's play...
Sartre has further chosen to emphasize the revengeful desires of Abigail Williams, a seventeen-year-old vixen who, after being seduced by Proctor, plots to have his wife hanged as a witch in order to take her place as mistress of the Proctor farm. Naturally then, there are some typically Gallic seduction scenes that are only implied in the play. The blatant lust of Abigail, brilliantly and demonically played by Mylene Demongeot, completely erases the more insidious evil of the original character...
...unfortunate Proctor, Yves Montand suffers and grimaces with commendable vigor, but he never manages to convey the internal conflict that threatens to destroy him. Perhaps this is not his fault, for Sartre has created a John Proctor who is more of a symbol than a tragic hero. At any rate, acting laurels must go to Simone Signoret, who plays Proctor's wife with a combination of puritan pigheadedness and feminine warmth that makes her the only completely convincing character in the film. Director Rouleau's portrayal of Deputy Governor Danforth, the prosecutor, is so blunt that even in his moments...