The Shawshank redemption Castle Rock Entertainment ; directed and screenplay by Frank Darabont ; produced by Niki Marvin.

Copyright: Castle Rock Entertainment. NM: motion picture. DCR 1994; PUB 23Sep94; REG 5Dec94; PA714-744.

DLC

Summary adapted from Sight and sound, Feb. 1995, p. 52.

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. In 1947, Portland, Maine banker Andy Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at the Shawshank State Prison. He is befriended by Ellis "Red" Redding, an inmate and prison contraband smuggler serving a life sentence. Red procures a rock hammer and a large poster of Rita Hayworth for Andy. Assigned to work in the prison laundry, Andy is frequently sexually assaulted by "the Sisters" and their leader, Bogs Diamond. In 1949, Andy overhears the captain of the guards, Byron Hadley, complaining about being taxed on an inheritance and offers to help him shelter the money legally. After an assault by the Sisters nearly kills Andy, Hadley beats and cripples Bogs, who is subsequently transferred to another prison. Andy is not attacked again. Warden Samuel Norton meets Andy and reassigns him to the prison library to assist elderly inmate Brooks Hatlen, a front to allow Andy to manage financial matters for other prison staff, guards from other prisons, and the warden himself. Andy begins writing weekly letters to the state legislature requesting funds to improve the prison's decaying library. Brooks is paroled in 1954 after serving 50 years, but he cannot adjust to the outside world and eventually hangs himself. The legislature sends a library donation that includes a recording of The Marriage of Figaro; Andy plays an excerpt over the public address system and is punished with solitary confinement. After his release from solitary, Andy explains that hope is what gets him through his time, a concept that Red dismisses. In 1963, Norton begins exploiting prison labor for public works, profiting by undercutting skilled labor costs and receiving bribes. Andy launders the money using the alias "Randall Stephens". Tommy Williams is incarcerated for burglary in 1965. Andy and Red befriend him, and Andy helps him pass his General Educational Development (GED) exam. A year later, Tommy reveals to Red and Andy that his cellmate at another prison had claimed responsibility for the murders for which Andy was convicted. Andy approaches Norton with this information, but Norton refuses to listen, and when Andy mentions the money laundering, Norton sends him back to solitary confinement. Norton has Hadley fatally shoot Tommy under the assumption of an escape attempt. Andy refuses to continue the money laundering, but Norton threatens to destroy the library, remove Andy's protection from the guards, and move him to worse conditions. Andy is released from solitary confinement after two months, and he tells a skeptical Red that he dreams of living in Zihuatanejo, a Mexican town on the Pacific coast.

Andy Dufresne, a bank executive, is sentenced to two life sentences for murdering his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. In Shawshank State Prison, he becomes friends with Red, who smuggles goods into the prison. After other prisoners beat him up, Red gives Andy a poster of Rita Heyworth. Andy uses his financial expertise to do the books for the warden's crooked schemes. Gil, a new prisoner, tells Andy that a man in another prison said that he killed a banker's wife and her lover. When Andy informs the warden, he throws Andy into solitary and has Gil killed. Behind the poster of Heyworth and other pin-ups, Andy has been digging a tunnel, through which he escapes to Mexico with the warden's money and after leaving evidence of the warden's crimes. When Red is finally released, he joins Andy.

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