Young Goodman Brown

Product Description

The classic short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne deals with man's propensity for evil and the Puritan way of opposing it. The film opens as the key figures-the pious minister, Goody Cloyse, Young Goodman Brown and his wife Faith-watch a woman who was found deep in a clearing in the forest tied to a stake where she will be burned the next morning. Young Goodman Brown takes leave of his wife, despite her misgivings, and journeys into the forest to assure himself that he can resist the evil he believes exists there. Filmmaker Donald Fox (Omega) employs symbolic visuals and ominous music to dramatize a series of supernatural ceremonies that produce the same ambiguity as Hawthorne's original story.

Review

YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN has long been a standard in any American literature curriculum; it vividly and concisely exhibits Hawthorne's preoccupation with man's tendency to evil and his inability to handle the knowledge of this evil. Because it has been so well dramatized, this film makes Hawthorne's story vivid to viewers of any academic level. --English Journal