This film takes some liberties with the source material to say the least. Hester Prynne and Rev. Dimmesdale's shameful affair is now a glorious love story, and while the novel doesn't actually show any of their exciting adultery, the film makes sure to correct that oversight. No more an exploration of guilt and sin, this is now the story of Hester and Dimmesdale being persecuted just because they dared to embrace their burning, passionate, true love for each other. Also, there's a big battle between colonists and Indians because why wouldn't there be.
As you might imagine, the novel's fans do not like this version, which they typically regard as having transformed Hawthorne's magnum opus into a generic bodice-ripper. Fortunately for them, the film was both a critical and commercial failure. Despite that, it somehow continues to be the most widely recognized screen adaptation of the story.
This film has the examples of:
- Adaptational Heroism: Like in the 1926 version, Dimmesdale keeps quiet only because it's what Hester wants.
- Adaptational Villainy: An Anti-Villain in the original novel, Chillingworth is now a murderous witch-hunter, with Robert Duvall giving an appropriately hammy performance.
- Adaptation Expansion: So much so that it takes the film over half of its running time to reach the novel's first scene. Why? Well, as Roger Ebert put it, "The great inconvenience of The Scarlet Letter, from a Hollywood point of view, is that the novel begins after the adultery has already taken place. This will not do."
- Actionized Adaptation: The film throws in an Indian raid for the sake of an action climax.
- Canon Foreigner: Hester's slave girl Mituba was invented for the film.
- The Captivity Narrative: A colonist named Mary was once kidnapped by Indians and spent some time living with them, making this trope her Backstory.
- Death of the Hypotenuse: Chillingworth hangs himself at the end. Yay, now nothing stands in the way of the Hester/Dimmesdale ship!
- Eat the Evidence: Mituba does this rather than hand over the message she was delivering from Hester to Dimmesdale.
- Eternal Sexual Freedom: This version imposes this trope on the Puritans, of all people, by portraying the main characters as feeling guiltless over their adultery. Roger Ebert
breaks down just how far afield from the source material the film goes. - First-Person Peripheral Narrator: The movie is narrated by a grown-up Pearl. This is a character who isn't even born until halfway through the film and is never older than a toddler onscreen.
- Hotter and Sexier: It's The Scarlet Letter with all those titillating scenes of adultery that Hawthorne forgot to include for some reason.
- In Name Only: Well, it takes place in Puritan Massachusetts, the main characters have the same names, and there's adultery. That's about where the similarities with the novel end. Demi Moore infamously justified the film's liberties by claiming that not many people had read the book, apparently unaware of its status as School Study Media.
- Naked First Impression: The first time Hester sees him, Dimmesdale is Skinny Dipping.
- Setting Update: The original novel took place in the 1640s. The film moves the time period forward to the 1660s, so that it can use the lead-up to King Philip's War as a backdrop.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Dimmesdale survives the scene that loosely corresponds to his death scene from the novel, and the film ends with him and Hester riding off together. However, Pearl's concluding narration mentions that he died a few years later, so the trope is downplayed.
- Sympathetic Slave Owner: Hester treats her slave Mituba as part of the family.
- Witch Hunt: Chillingworth gets one launched 'cause he's the baddie.
