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Examples Of Body Language In The Crucible

Decent Essays

The Crucible is a film directed by Nicholas Hytner about a group of young girls who, after a night of defying their societal laws, create tension and havoc within their town by performing witchcraft and dancing in the woods. The girls scapegoat and lie their way out of death in order to save themselves, consequentially causing others to be hung for the girl's wrongdoing. The director uses a range of film techniques to provide the audience with a better understanding of the ideas involved in the film. These ideas include the danger of hysteria on a society, scapegoating under pressure and its effect on a community and puritan repression and what that can lead to. Hytner's purpose was to use these film techniques to illustrate and portray the theme of scapegoating within the film.

The danger of hysteria and how quickly and vastly it affects people is a key idea within the film. Body language and movement are film techniques used to identify this idea. A specific example of this being used within the film is when Abigail, a lead protagonist within the film, begins to make false accusations within a hectic, hysterical court. The girls all tense up and look up to the rafters in search of a "yellow bird" about to take flight, the court is then taken outside by hysterical, crying girls flailing their bodies about and running out to a lake. The use of this body language and movement within the film shows the directors intended target at the idea of the dangers of hysteria and

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