What was so brilliantly re-written 15 years later as Arthur Miller's Tony winning play "The Crucible" is given the Hollywood treatment in this entertaining but less than stellar adaption of the story of the Salem witch trials. The screenplay is decent but the cast seems more modern than puritan. When Salem's stern minister berates Claudette Colbert for her fluffy bonnet, he needed to look around and ask everybody to speak, because even with Shakespearean like speech patterns, they sound more like they are quoting Fanny Hurst. Some of the character's real names have been altered and the story supposedly fictionalized, but in comparison between the movie and the play gives credence to the similarities.
A huge cast of familiar names assured this box office success, among them Fred MacMurray as a stranger who tempts Colbert and ultimately has her accused of bewitching him. The drama really gets started when a book about witchcraft falls into the hands of the bratty Bonita Granville who accuses an African born slave of bewitching her. Madame Sul-Te-Wan gives one of her dark portrayals of a woman involved in the supernatural who isn't going to be hung alone.
The supporting cast is present for name only with each of the actors having one or two key scenes but not much else to do. They include Beaulah Bondi, Gale Sondergaard, Sterling Holloway, Mary Nash, Edward Ellis and Virginia Weidler. The atmosphere is appropriately puritanical, but the film is weakened by modern style performances in period costumes.
A huge cast of familiar names assured this box office success, among them Fred MacMurray as a stranger who tempts Colbert and ultimately has her accused of bewitching him. The drama really gets started when a book about witchcraft falls into the hands of the bratty Bonita Granville who accuses an African born slave of bewitching her. Madame Sul-Te-Wan gives one of her dark portrayals of a woman involved in the supernatural who isn't going to be hung alone.
The supporting cast is present for name only with each of the actors having one or two key scenes but not much else to do. They include Beaulah Bondi, Gale Sondergaard, Sterling Holloway, Mary Nash, Edward Ellis and Virginia Weidler. The atmosphere is appropriately puritanical, but the film is weakened by modern style performances in period costumes.