Gangbangin' in the 19th Century

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"Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don't make the results; the counters make the results. The counters. Keep counting."

Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent)

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"Gangs of New York," which premiered on this day in 2002, can be a difficult movie to watch. Apparently, it was also a difficult film to make. Costs overran the budget by 25%, ballooning to over $100 million.

It opened with hand–to–hand battle in the snow in the infamous 19th–century gang fight of Five Points between the Protestant "Natives" and the Irish Catholic "Dead Rabbits," a fight "recorded in American history," wrote Roger Ebert, "but not underlined."

I don't know what the actual battle was like, but the movie depiction was grim. The combatants went at each other with clubs and hatchets, leaving red stains on the carpet of snow beneath them.

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Actually, grim is a good word for "Gangs of New York."

It was a rough movie, full of violence and bloodshed.

Ebert acknowledged the film was a "triumph" for director Martin Scorsese "and yet I do not think this film is in the first rank of his masterpieces. It is very good but not great," he wrote.

"Scorsese's films usually leap joyfully onto the screen, the work of a master in command of his craft," Ebert continued. "Here there seems more struggle, more weight to overcome, more darkness. It is a story that Scorsese has filmed without entirely internalizing. The gangsters in his earlier films are motivated by greed, ego and power; they like nice cars, shoes, suits, dinners, women. They murder as a cost of doing business. The characters in 'Gangs of New York' kill because they like to and want to. They are bloodthirsty and motivated by hate. I think Scorsese liked the heroes of 'Goodfellas,' 'Casino' and 'Mean Streets,' but I'm not sure he likes this crowd."

Granted, there really wasn't a whole lot to like, but there were some worthwhile observations to be made.

For example, Ebert pointed out that the movie was loaded with Dickensian characters, and he compared the hero of the story, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, only five years removed from his heartthrob role in "Titanic," to David Copperfield or Oliver Twist. I had to wonder how the young girls who had flocked to theaters over and over again to see DiCaprio in "Titanic" felt when they saw Daniel Day–Lewis put a hot knife on DiCaprio's cheek, disfiguring his character. It was, to be sure, a different kind of role.

And Cameron Diaz, who played as volatile a love interest as the screen has ever seen, was compared to Nancy in Dickens' "Oliver Twist." Diaz was "a hellcat with a fierce loyalty to her man," Ebert wrote — not unlike Shani Wallis in "Oliver!" several decades before.

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The movie also gave an unflinching look at democracy in America in the 19th century.

In 19th–century New York, that often meant the buying and selling of votes and the delivering of constituencies like lambs to a slaughter. Given the subject matter of the movie, that is probably a pretty good analogy.

"Gangs of New York" received 10 Oscar nominations but didn't win a single award.

Mass(achusetts) Hysteria

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On this day in 1996, Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" made its second big–screen appearance since it premiered on the stage in 1953.

"The Crucible" was inspired by — but not necessarily a literal history of — the infamous Salem witch trials of the late 17th century.

I'm not a full–fledged historian — really more of an amateur one who minored in history in college and has always had an interest in the subject — but I think that is an important distinction to make.

Miller wrote it as an allegory of McCarthyism. If one recognizes that fact, it is easier to understand what is said and done in the play.

And, while those events do have something of a basis in fact, it is not, as I said before, a literal history. It is a dramatization.

Miller, who had already won a Pulitzer Prize for "Death of a Salesman," was fascinated by the witch trials and did extensive research in Salem, Mass. As nearly as I can tell, many of the characters in the play (and movie) were real — and I know there were witch trials in Salem in 1692, resulting in 29 convictions, 19 hangings, one case of a man being crushed under heavy stones when authorities tried to coerce him into entering a plea and at least five other deaths of people while they were in prison.

It's just that some of the details were inaccurate.

That is understandable, though, considering that few of the written records that have survived from the time offer much in the way of clues about the personalities of the people who were involved.

But that wouldn't have meant much to Miller, anyway. His play used the witch trials to inspire, not inform. He made no pretense that he was being historically accurate in his portrayals.

Characteristics of several real people were merged into one — a judge, a witness, a defendant — to be representative of the people and the attitudes of late 17th century America.

Even if the people were real, facts were altered to fit the needs of the story. The antagonist of the story, Abigail Williams (played by Winona Ryder in the movie), was a real person, one of the accusers — but in reality she was 11 years old. Miller made her 17 in the play so she could be the lover of the story's portagonist, a real farmer named John Proctor (played by Miller's son–in–law, Daniel Day–Lewis) — thus providing her with the motivation to accuse Proctor's wife (played by Joan Allen) of witchery, a crime that was punishable by execution.

There is no reason to believe that such a clandestine relationship ever existed. It was created to fit Miller's needs, and that made it necessary to play around with the characters' ages.

Williams, as I said, was 11 years old at the time, but her age was elevated to 17 to make the relationship seem more plausible, and Proctor was 60, but his character in the play and movie was about half that — again, to make the affair more palatable for mainstream audiences.

Other changes were modest, even understandable. In reality, the number of girls involved was far greater than it was in the play, but Miller wisely cut many of those minor characters. I suppose, if one wanted to pick nits, one could quibble over the exclusion of some and/or the inclusion of others.

In fairness to Miller, though, I must say that many of the other characters and circumstances appear to be legitimately represented. The dialogue is what one would expect from people of that time — i.e., the use of Goody as an abbreviated form of Goodwife, the customary colloquialism for a female spouse.

Miller wrote the adapted screenplay for the 1996 movie and was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination, the only one he ever received.

I could not help wondering, as I watched the 1996 version again recently, if Miller (who died in 2005) might have seen "The Crucible" as an allegory for the War on Terrorism and the use of waterboarding to coerce information from witnesses — and if he might have made adjustments to the story to make it appropriate for 21st century audiences.

For example, early in the 1996 movie, several girls — including Aibgail — gathered in the woods at night to perform a ritual with a slave named Tituba. The ritual involved a dead chicken, the drinking of its blood and dancing around a fire — and it was witnessed from a distance by the town's Puritan minister, Samuel Parris (played by Bruce Davison).

That event was only mentioned in conversations in the original play. Moviegoers in 1996 saw it acted out.

The minister was alarmed when two of the girls who participated in the ritual fell into unconsciousness and would not awaken. and he sought to find a cause. Fearful of being punished, Abigail pointed the finger at the slave, claiming that she had been working with the devil. Tituba denied the charge but eventually confessed to being a witch after a savage beating.

And that was the catalyst for everything else.

A slave woman named Tituba did live in Salem in those days, She was one of the first to be accused of practicing witchcraft in Salem and denied it initially — but she was coerced into confessing that she had had conversations with the devil.

In 17th–century Salem, that was like throwing a lit match on gasoline.

The extensive waterboarding by CIA operatives of Al–Qaeda suspects occurred in 2002 and 2003, which was before Miller's death, but it wasn't publicly revealed until after his death at the age of 89.

He was probably too old to have written an adaptation by then, anyway. But he might have collaborated with someone.

Who knows what that might have yielded?