The Shawshank Redemption

For the novella, see Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.

The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption film poster
Directed by	Frank Darabont
Written by	Frank Darabont (screenplay) Stephen King (original novella)
Produced by	Niki Marvin
Starring	Tim Robbins Morgan Freeman Bob Gunton Clancy Brown William Sadler Gil Bellows James Whitmore
Cinematography	Roger Deakins
Edited by	Richard Francis-Bruce
Music by	Thomas Newman
Distributed by	-USA- Columbia Pictures (1994-1999) Warner Bros. Pictures (1999-present) -UK- Rank Film Distributors (1995 theatrical) Carlton Visual Entertainment (2003 DVD) Granada Ventures (2004 DVD)
Release dates	September 10, 1994
Running time	142 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$25,000,000

The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 drama film, written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the Stephen King novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The film stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freeman as Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding.

The film portrays Andy's twenty years in the cruelty of Shawshank State Prison, a fictional penitentiary in Maine, and his friendship with Red, a fellow inmate. This movie exemplifies the gap between box office success and popularity. Despite a poor box office reception, The Shawshank Redemption received favorable reviews from critics and has enjoyed a remarkable life on cable television, home video, and DVD, and continues to be noticed by popular culture. It is frequently ranked amongst the greatest movies of all time.

Plot

In 1947, banker Andy Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover based on strong circumstantial evidence and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at the notorious Shawshank Prison in Maine. Days later, prison inmate Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding appears before the Shawshank Prison Parole Board who reject his parole. Red emerges onto the prison yard in time to witness the arrival of new inmates at the prison gates, including Andy Dufresne. Following an ominous and intimidating introduction by Warden Samuel Norton and Chief Prison Guard Captain Byron Hadley, Andy and the other new inmates are deloused and shuffled to their cells. One of the prisoners breaks down in his cell. Captain Hadley yanks the prisoner from his cell and beats him unconscious, inflicting injuries that would eventually kill the new inmate.

File:Shawshankdvdcap.jpg

Andy asks Red for a Rita Hayworth poster as the inmates watch Gilda

Andy gradually becomes acquainted with Red's circle of friends, and specifically Red himself, who is known as a clever supplier among his fellow inmates, especially for contraband. Andy approaches Red and orders from him a rock hammer so as to pursue his hobby of rock collecting. A friendship develops between the two men. Andy initially works in the prison laundry where he is harassed and nearly raped on several occasions by a group of sadistic inmates known as "The Sisters." One night during a film screening, Andy asks Red for a Rita Hayworth poster.

One day, Andy's knowledge of finance enables him to set up a tax shelter for Captain Hadley. Andy is re-appointed to assist Brooks Hatlen in the prison library, his first instance of preferential treatment. Andy sets up a makeshift office to provide tax and financial services to a growing number of guards and his "clientele" grows to include the entire prison staff, guards from other prisons and even Warden Norton. When Andy is once again accosted and brutalized by The Sisters as he leaves the theater, the prison guards commit vigilante punishment against the Sisters' leader. It becomes clear that they are now protecting Andy from mistreatment. The leader of The Sisters is permanently hospitalized from a brutal act of retribution by Captain Hadley, and Andy is never again victimized by inmates.

Andy also begins to write to the Maine Senate for funds to improve the library. Andy and Red find a distraught and hostile Brooks holding a knife to Heywood's throat. Brooks' parole has finally been granted and Brooks, who has been in prison since 1905, is so accustomed to prison life that he fears the real world. Outside the walls of Shawshank, Brooks finds nothing but loneliness, isolation, and a dead-end job. He writes a final letter to his friends back at Shawshank before hanging himself in his room at the halfway house.

Warden Samuel Norton capitalizes on Andy's skills and devises a program to put prison inmates to work for local construction projects. His real motive is to profit from corruption in the system and Andy hides the embezzled funds for Norton by creating a fraudulent identity. In the same year, the prison library is extended and Andy begins helping inmates obtain their high school diplomas. A young prisoner named Tommy Williams enters Shawshank in 1965 and tells a story about a previous cellmate that appears to confirm Andy's long-held claim of innocence. Fearing exposure if Andy is set free, Norton has Hadley kill Tommy and sends Andy to solitary confinement. He threatens Andy to force him to continue conspiring with him.

Two months later, Andy is released from solitary confinement. Norton continues to use Andy to channel his illegal gains. Andy returns to the main prison population a seemingly broken man. Out in the yard, Andy gives ominous instructions to Red. Andy's friends are concerned that he may commit suicide, recalling Brooks. The following morning, Andy is missing from his cell, with only a poster of Raquel Welch staring at the Warden, who discovers to his shock, that the poster covers a long escape tunnel that Andy was able to secretly dig over the course of many years. Warden Norton loses his composure and commits all of his resources to tracking Andy down. Andy is never found.

In a flashback sequence, it is shown that Andy escaped the prison by tunneling through the walls using the rock hammer over a period of 19 years, chipping away at the cement wall with use of a poster to cover up his work. He completed his escape by crawling 500 yards through a sewage tunnel. Once he has escaped, Andy assumes the fake identity he created earlier for the purpose of concealing the warden's embezzlements. Wearing Norton's clean suit and shoes, Andy withdraws the funds that he had deposited for Norton over the years. He also sends evidence of the scams to a local newspaper, exposing the warden. Hadley is arrested, reportedly "sobbing like a little girl" as he is taken away, and Norton commits suicide in his office. Soon after, Red is finally released on parole. After trying to cope with life outside prison (being given the same job and apartment Brooks had years earlier), he recalls his promise to Andy shortly before Andy's escape. Red finds money and instructions hidden in a field, and eventually finds Andy in Zihuatanejo on the coast of Mexico.

Cast

• Tim Robbins: Andy Dufresne
• Morgan Freeman: Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding
• Bob Gunton: Warden Samuel Norton
• William Sadler: Heywood
• Clancy Brown: Captain Byron Hadley
• Gil Bellows: Tommy Williams
• Mark Rolston: Bogs Diamond
• James Whitmore: Brooks Hatlen
• Jeffrey DeMunn: District Attorney (1946)
• Bill Bolender: Elmo Blatch
• Dion Anderson: Head Bull Haig
• Jude Ciccolella: Mert

Production

Darabont secured the film adaptation rights in 1987 from Stephen King after impressing the author with his short film adaptation of "The Woman in the Room" in 1983. This is one of the more famous Dollar Deals made by King with aspiring filmmakers. Darabont later directed The Green Mile, which was based on another work about a prison by Stephen King, and then followed that up with an adaptation of King's short story The Mist.

The Shawshank Redemption was filmed in and around the city of Mansfield, Ohio, located in north-central Ohio. The prison featured in the film is the old, abandoned Ohio State Reformatory immediately north of downtown Mansfield. The Reformatory buildings have been used in several other films, including Harry and Walter Go to New York, Air Force One and Tango and Cash. Most of the prison yard has now been demolished to make room for expansion of the adjacent Richland Correctional Institute, but the Reformatory's Gothic Administration Building remains standing and, due to its prominent use in films, has become a tourist attraction. Several scenes were also shot in Portland, Maine and Lucas, Ohio. The real warden of the Richland Correctional Institute had a cameo appearance in Shawshank as the prisoner seated directly behind Tommy on his bus ride to prison and several other staff members from the nearby Mansfield Correctional Institution have small roles.

The photo of a young Red on his parole forms is that of Morgan Freeman's son, Alfonso. Alfonso is also seen in the yard when Andy's load of prisoners is first dropped off, shouting enthusiastically "Fresh Fish! Fresh Fish" whilst reeling in an imaginary line. Alfonso later played a parody of his father's character, Red, in a short spoof titled The Sharktank Redemption, available on the second disc of the 10th anniversary DVD.

The film ends with the prominent dedication "In Memory of Allen Greene". Darabont dedicated the film to his friend and agent, Allen Greene II, who died just before the completion of the film due to complications from AIDS.

Interpretations

Integrity

Roger Ebert suggests that the integrity of Andy Dufresne is an important theme in the story line, especially in prison, where integrity is lacking. Andy is an individual of integrity (here referring to adherence to a code of morality) among a host of criminals, and guards, with little integrity.

Christian interpretations

Some critics have interpreted the film as a Christian parable due to its handling of hope, original sin, redemption, salvation, and faith in the afterlife. Some Christian reviewers have referred to it as a film "true to Christian principles." In the director's commentary track on the tenth anniversary DVD, Darabont denies any intent to create such a parable, and calls such interpretations of the film "fantastic."

Critical reaction

The Shawshank Redemption is considered one of the greatest films in history. In 1999, film critic Roger Ebert listed Shawshank on his "Great Movies" list,^[2] and in reader polls by the film magazine Empire, the film ranked fifth in 2004 and first in 2006 on the lists for greatest movie of all time.

In the 1994 Academy Awards the movie was nominated for seven awards (Best Picture, Best Actor–Morgan Freeman, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound) but, in the shadow of 1994's big winner Forrest Gump, failed to win a single one. In 1998 Shawshank was not listed in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, but nine years later, it placed at the 72nd position on the revised list, outranking both Forrest Gump (76th) and Pulp Fiction (94th), the two most critically acclaimed movies from the year of Shawshank's release.

Music

The score was composed by Thomas Newman, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1994. Interestingly enough, the main theme ("End Titles" on the soundtrack album) is perhaps best known to modern audiences as the inspirational sounding music from many movie trailers dealing with inspirational, dramatic, or romantic films in much the same way that James Horner's driving music from the end of Aliens is used in many movie trailers for action films.

References in King's other works

In the Stephen King novella, Apt Pupil, Arthur Denker mentions that the banker who helped him buy stocks was named Andy Dufresne, and in the movie adaptation of the King novel Dolores Claiborne, the titular character threatens her abusive husband with a "stint at Shawshank." Shawshank State Prison is also mentioned in It when Steven Bishoff Dubay gets convicted of first-degree manslaughter and is sentenced for fifteen years. Shawshank State Prison is mentioned again when Cheryl Lamonica's death was presumably done by one of her boyfriends, one of which is serving Shawshank for armed robbery, who can also presumably be Tommy. Shawshank is also mentioned in Needful Things where Ace Merril went shortly after his exploits in The Body. The Body is a Novella by King which was adapted to film as the coming of age movie Stand by Me. Shawshank was also recently mentioned in the TV series The Dead Zone which is based on characters from the novel of the same name.

Blaze is a Richard Bachman novel polished from a version written years previously and described by King as a 'trunk novel'. In it, the titular criminal character often finds himself talking to his dead partner-in-crime George, the real brains of the partnership. On one occasion, George accuses Blaze of stupidity and asks if he wants to end up in Shawshank.

References to other works

•Andy asks Red for a Rita Hayworth poster during a screening of Hayworth's film Gilda. The poster depicts a scene from that film. He eventually replaces the poster with one of Marilyn Monroe in her skirt blowing scene from The Seven Year Itch and later with Raquel Welch from One Million Years B.C.

•When Andy receives the first response to his letters to the Maine Senate concerning the prison library, the shipment includes a record of The Marriage of Figaro. Defying Norton, Andy plays the aria "Sull'aria? Che soave zeffiretto" over the prison loudspeakers for all the inmates to hear.

•While sorting books in the library, Heywood asks Andy what to do with a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. Andy notes that the book is about a prison break, foreshadowing his own escape by tunneling later in the film; Red advises that they file it in the educational materials section.

•While talking to Red about Randell Stevens, an imaginary man used to cover up money laundering, Andy mentions that Randell Stevens is a "...second cousin to Harvey the rabbit." Andy is referencing an imaginary six-foot rabbit from the 1950's movie Harvey (film).

References

• Director's commentary on the special edition DVD.
• A review from The Washington Post
• A review from PrisonFlicks.com
• "The Shawshank Redemption The Shooting Script" Darabont, Frank Newmarket Press ©1996, introduction King, Stephen

Further reading

• The Shawshank Redemption Mark Kermode (London:British Film Institute, 2003)

See also

• List of fictional prisons
• Films considered the greatest ever

External links

• The Shawshank Redemption at IMDb
• Template:Rogerebert
• Template:Rogerebert as "Great Movie"
• Template:Filmsite
• The script for the film - varies slightly from the final version.
• The Shawshank Redemption at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films list