The French Had a Name for It '23
The Crucible
The Crucible / Les sorcières de Salem
The first adaptation of Arthur Miller’s famous play about witch hunts in Puritan America, The Crucible was Yves Montand and Simone Signoret’s passion project, directed by Raymond Rouleau, who had helmed the famed couple’s landmark stage version. Standing out in the tale of jealousy, betrayal and paranoia is the young (and very blonde!) FRENCH festival favorite Mylene Demongeot (A Kiss for a Killer) as Abigail Williams, the instigator of all the calamity that grips Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.
Even at 145 minutes in length, it is a gripping version that was unavailable for decades (some say that the film was kept locked away by Miller himself, as revenge for Montand’s affair with Marilyn Monroe, to whom Miller was married at the time). (1957, dir. Raymond Rouleau)
The tenth in a series that began in 2014, THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT ’23 is a masterful mixture of newly rediscovered rarities and re-screenings of past festival favorites that exemplifies the unique programming touch of mercurial Midcentury Productions executive director Don Malcolm. FRENCH ’23 screens November 26-27 and December 3-4.
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