Blake Pruneau
Hour: 1&2
Historical Movie Comparison
If the story of your life was exaggerated to entertain an audience, would it be ok to change some of the details to make it more successful as a film? In the film The Crucible, based off the play that portrayed the happenings of the real event, there were multiple historical contradictions. Some of these contradictions being in forms of combined characters or an absent number of characters. Some of these differences are created to entertain audiences as opposed to staying completely truthful to all known aspects of the event.
To start, we have contradictions that include body number and combined characters. The church scenes in the movie include the court only having three or so judges rather than the several more that were present. This was conceivably done not only to make room on a stage, but also to make it easier for an audience to understand the court's stance on a topic within the play. Although you can fit more people into a movie set, actually understanding the productions’ story direction is important as ever. Another altercation of character number would include Tituba’s parter from Barbados, John, another Carib indian that arrived with Tituba. He never made an appearance in the movie, The playwright may have made this decision because Tituba was the main mention in terms of Paris’ servants that made differences that heavily impacted the event. Meaning that including John’s presence would not contribute to the movie in a useful way. John being included in the movie would waste screen time that could be used to develop another character's story and potentially engage a viewer. This would also focus the movie on important or more developed characters rather that investing time in more flat characters.
Moving on to changes in the events atmosphere. To address atmospheric changes made by the writer, let me mention one. There was a scene about ¾ way into the movie when Abigail Williams gasps and looked up into one of the banisters and shouted that the devil was there. This scene conveyed a strong feeling of urgency and even contempt as well as making the audience wonder, “how long will she continue this act of hers?”. There are certain things movies based on historic events do to keep audiences interested. It is true that some producers will risk straying from the truth to entice their audience, there are however other ways of going about such a task. In The Crucible, there was a good deal of attention payed to John Proctor and his place in the story, the movie could have gone for a capture of looking over the whole town perspective equally, but cleverly chose a person who oversees the events that occur to get both a strong emotional connection as well as an accurate viewing of events that John “proctored” throughout the movie. To include an example of John Proctor's focus in the movie, near to the end, he shows true and connectable human nature when he shouts, “Because it is my name! and I cannot have another!” the camera showing exclusive perspective on his predicament. To contrast the events discussed, Had a more scientific or factual documentary type viewing have taken place, entertainment must be looked for, and if not entertainment, the true reality by the events told as accurately as possible. Of course, telling it coldly will not compel anybody to spend their money on this film, nor will the film become a renowned piece of film as a result. Even small changes to a plot can make all the artistic difference needed.
To summarize, I’ve talked about and emphasized the meaning behind diverting from an events history to make it more interesting, as well as a play's decision to focus in on certain characters or points in a story. Capturing a historical event in its entirety can be difficult, choices made in The Crucible are a good example of historical contradiction in entertainment. In historical fiction movies we can learn a lot about history. Though like I mentioned, it is important to look into historical inaccuracies such as I have found in the contents of the paragraphs above. I know it is important that in the future, we as a class can always learn from the way we watch a deceiver an entertaining piece of historical film.
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