Tagline: Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.
The Shawshank Redemption movie storyline. Bank Merchant Andy Dufresne is convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover, and sentenced to life imprisonment at Shawshank prison. Life seems to have taken a turn for the worse, but fortunately Andy befriends some of the other inmates, in particular a character known only as Red. Over time Andy finds ways to live out life with relative ease as one can in a prison, leaving a message for all that while the body may be locked away in a cell, the spirit can never be truly imprisoned.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) is an impressive, engrossing piece of film-making from director / screenwriter Frank Darabont who adapted horror master Stephen King’s 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (first published in Different Seasons) for his first feature film. The inspirational, life-affirming and uplifting, old-fashioned style Hollywood product (resembling The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and Cool Hand Luke (1967)) is a combination prison / dramatic film and character study. The popular film is abetted by the golden cinematography of Roger Deakins, a touching score by Thomas Newman, and a third imposing character – Maine’s oppressive Shawshank State Prison (actually the transformed, condemned Mansfield Ohio Correctional Institution or State Reformatory).
Posters for the film illustrate the liberating, redemptive power of hope and the religious themes of freedom and resurrection, with the words: “Fear can hold you prisoner, Hope can set you free.” Darabont’s film is a patiently-told, allegorical tale (unfolding like a long-played, sometimes painstaking, persistent chess game) of friendship, patience, hope, survival, emancipation, and ultimate redemption and salvation by the time of the film’s finale.
It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Morgan Freeman), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound – but it failed to win a single Oscar. And the film’s director failed to receive a nomination for himself! In the same year as Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and Speed, they received all of the attention. Only through positive word-of-mouth (following cable TV and broadcast airings, and then video releases) did the film do well – although its original reception at the box-office was lukewarm. The film was the precursor for another inspirational and popular film (and a similar adaptation of a Stephen King story by writer / director Frank Darabont) – The Green Mile (1999).
The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 American drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the 1982 Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. It tells the story of banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who is sentenced to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murder of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. Over the following two decades, he befriends a fellow prisoner, contraband smuggler Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), and becomes instrumental in a money laundering operation led by the prison warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton). William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, and James Whitmore appear in supporting roles.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Directed by: Frank Darabont
Starring: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, James Whitmore, Larry Brandenburg, Neil Giuntoli, Brian Libby, David Proval
Screenplay by: Frank Darabont
Production Design by: Terence Marsh
Cinematography by: Roger Deakins
Film Editing by: Richard Francis-Bruce
Costume Design by: Elizabeth McBride
Set Decoration by: Michael Seirton
Art Direction by: Peter Landsdown Smith
Music by: Thomas Newman
MPAA Rating: R for language and prison violence.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: September 23, 1994
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