MILLER'S `CRUCIBLE' SHINES ANEW.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Film Critic

Could any director come up with visual images potent enough to equal the dramatic fireworks of Arthur Miller's Salem witch hunt play, ``The Crucible''?

British filmmaker Nicholas Hytner has done it in this passionate and authentic adaptation, fitted out with additional scenes and dialogue resculpted by Miller himself to fit this swift-moving format.

Your first hint that this is not to be a dry schoolbook rendition of the classic is the opening scene, in which teen-age girls, presumably bored stiff by the Puritan environment of their 1692 New England village, take to the woods for a moonlight ritual of dancing and spell-chanting, in which they play at witchcraft and invoke the names of the men they desire.

The most daring and aggressive among them is Abigail (Winona Ryder), who drinks a charm to destroy the wife of a man she loves and has already had an affair with.

But when their semi-nude cavorting is discovered, there's no real witchcraft needed, as Abigail, in a classic maneuver, diverts attention from her own wrongdoing by falsely accusing others.

As hysteria grows among the gullible townspeople (``The devil is afoot in Salem!''), the witch hunt becomes a true nightmare in which the innocent are powerless, since anything they say or do is twisted by an ego-tripping magistrate (a powerfully oppressive Paul Scofield) to become proof of their guilt.

Hytner treats the local paranoia like a virus that spreads infection from one household to another, and gets things off to a feverish, whooshing start - indeed, the tempo initially seems a bit contrived and hysterical, but just as the trick starts to wear thin, Miller's dramatic craft kicks in to move things masterfully to their purpose.

Were there ever more satisfying dramatic reversals than these? No sooner does the wicked Abigail have her lover's innocent wife in front of the magistrate, pleading for her life and reputation, than the truth comes out, and suddenly it's the lying girl whose life is on the line.

Miller's period dialogue has the grace and resonance of poetry, even in this season of Shakespeare revivals; and one needn't know anything about 1950s Communist red-baiting to appreciate the spectre of a group pressuring everyone to think the way they do, or to relate to a time when going with the flow, however idiotic, is considered the only way to save one's neck.

As adept as Hytner (``The Madness of King George'') is with performance and theme, he's also a vivid pictorialist, and frame by frame, this is a beauty of a movie.

The top-drawer cast does much to deepen the drama's effect; the excellent Joan Allen adds soul and sorrow as the estranged but loving wife of the adulterous John Proctor (Daniel Day-Lewis); Day-Lewis reaches deep to portray the righteous man struggling to recover himself, and Ryder displays plenty enough spirit to lead the pack of bleating sheep crying witchcraft into their fits of nonsense.

THE FACTS

The film: ``The Crucible'' (PG-13; implied sexuality).

The stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Paul Scofield, Joan Allen, Bruce Davison, Rob Campbell, Jeffrey Jones.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Nicholas Hytner. Screenplay by Arthur Miller, from his stage play. Produced by Robert A. Miller and David V. Picker. Released by 20th Century Fox.

Running time: Two hours, two minutes.

Playing: AMC Century 14.

Our rating: Four Stars.

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Photo

Photo: In ``The Crucible,'' hysteria runs rampant among Salem's teen-age girls, who convince gullible townspeople that the devil is afoot.