Arthur Miller

A movie about Arthur Miller is a movie about the 20th century.
The 1920s in New York, America's role in the Second World War, the American dream in the form of Marilyn Monroe, the illusion of Hollywood, the theater world of Broadway, the hunt for communists in the MacCarthy era, premieres of Miller's plays.
His most famous play "Death of a Salesman" is considered a "watershed" of American theater.
Miller's art was to put his finger in the wounds of America.
With his plays, he wanted to create a connection between the political and the personal.
His plays were torn apart because he held up a mirror to America and celebrated because people left the theater deeply moved.

On the one hand, he made himself an advocate for the little people, was an avowed Marxist who always felt more attracted to the failed than to the successful.
Nevertheless, he was also susceptible to glamor and the flash of the limelight.
His marriage to Marylin Monroe increased his public profile enormously.
The legendary McCarthy Committee also wanted to benefit from the playwright's sudden fame and summoned him.
The fact that he did not cooperate with the Committee for Un-American Activities made him a heroic figure.
However, it was not this that made the headlines, but his impending marriage to Hollywood diva Marilyn Monroe.
The image the world has of Arthur Miller to this day is that of a left-wing moralist who married the most exciting woman in Hollywood.
But Arthur Miller lived the life of a century.
He is more than the diva's controversial third husband.
Arthur Miller is America's conscience.
Someone who believed that theater could change the world.
He would have been 100 years old this year.

The film uses archive footage to show the life and work of Arthur Miller.
Companions such as Dustin Hoffman, Volker Schlöndorff and his sister Joan Copeland have their say.

First broadcast: Saturday, October 17, 2015, 10.25 p.m. on 3sat