The Witches of Salem

The Witches of Salem (1957)

Les Sorcières de Salem

Salem 1692. The young Abigail, seduced and abandoned by John Proctor, accuses John's wife of being a witch in revenge. A series of tragic trials soon befall Salem as fear and suspicion blur the lines of reality.

Date of release
1957-04-26
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (49)
Runtime
2h 25m
Genres
Drama, History
Director
Raymond Rouleau

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Crucible and Salem Witch Trials

The Crucible is a 1957 French-language historical drama film directed by Raymond Rouleau with a screenplay adapted by Jean-Paul Sartre from the 1953 play The Crucible, by Arthur Miller.

Production

Jean-Paul Sartre began writing the script in late 1955, during what author David Caute defined as "the height of his rapprochement with the Soviet Union". He was inspired by the success of Marcel Aymé's French-language adaptation of Miller's The Crucible, titled Les sorcières de Salem, which was staged in Paris' Sarah Bernhardt Theater, starring Simone Signoret as Elizabeth Proctor.

The film was one of four major Franco-East German co-productions made during the late 1950s - the others were Till Ulenspiegel's Adventures, Les Misérables and Les Arrivistes. The Democratic Republic's government authorized the DEFA studio to collaborate with companies outside the Eastern Bloc in order to gain access to Western audiences, thus bypassing the limitations imposed by West Germany's Hallstein Doctrine; eventually, they intended their…

Pascale Petit made her debut in the film. She was discovered working as a hairdress by Françoise Lugagne who recommended her to her husband Raymond Rouleau.

The sets and costumes were designed by Lila de Nobili and Rostislav Doboujinsky.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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