The condemned

Movie
German title	The condemned
Original title	The Shawshank Redemption
Country of production	United States
original language	English
Publishing year	1994
length	142 minutes
Age rating	FSK 12
Rod
Director	Frank Darabont
script	Frank Darabont
production	Niki Marvin
music	Thomas Newman
camera	Roger Deakins
cut	Richard Francis-Bruce
occupation
Tim Robbins : Andy Dufresne Morgan Freeman : Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding Bob Gunton : Samuel Norton William Sadler : Heywood James Whitmore : Brooks Hatlen Gil Bellows : Tommy Williams Clancy Brown : Captain Byron Hadley Mark Rolston : Bogs Diamond Jeffrey DeMunn : District Attorney Jude Ciccolella : Guardian Mert Paul McCrane : Guardian Trout David Proval : Snooze
synchronization

The Ohio State Reformatory , a former prison in Ohio , was used as the backdrop for both exterior shots and the shooting in the headquarters building (2007)

The Shawshank Redemption (Original title: The Shawshank Redemption ) is a film drama by director Frank Darabont in 1994 after the first novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption of Different Seasons by Stephen King , tells the story of the condemned to life imprisonment Andy Dufresne and his friendship with his fellow inmate Red tells. The film has consistently held first place in the IMDb's Top 250 since 2008.

action

The plot begins in 1947, when the bank manager Andy Dufresne is sentenced to twice life imprisonment on the basis of circumstantial evidence of the murder of his wife and her lover, although he protests his innocence. He is said to be serving this sentence in the dreaded Shawshank prison in Maine . From the beginning he doesn't fit into the society of the other prisoners at all, he is tormented by assaults and rape by fellow inmates and by the brutal and corrupt guards.

In prison he got to know some of his fellow inmates better over time - among them Red, who has been in prison for murder for twenty years and has the reputation among inmates that he can get anything for the equivalent. Andy says he's a hobby geologist and asks Red to get him a geologist's hammer ( rock hammer ).

After initial difficulties, Andy rises in the standing of fellow inmates and guards. While Andy and a few other inmates are tarring the roof of the sign factory, the dreaded senior overseer Byron Hadley tells his colleagues about an inheritance he has just made and is audibly angry about the tax burden that will come his way. This causes Andy to explain to the overseer that he can keep the entire amount by transferring the inheritance to his wife. He offers him to fill out the necessary documents and forms for him and asks in return only three beers for each of his buddies. Hadley accepts the offer.

Andy now asks Red to get him Rita Hayworth , whereupon the latter gives him a poster of her.

After Andy is beaten up by fellow inmates who tried to rape him again, he is admitted to the infirmary for a month. The brutal Hadley avenges Andy, who now seems useful to him by cruelly beating the ringleader of the attackers, Bogs, who is then paralyzed. From then on, the convicts know that Andy is under Hadley's protection until further notice.

Soon after, Andy is transferred from the laundry to the prison library, where he is supposed to help the aged prison librarian Brooks Hatlen, an inmate who, like Andy himself, is one of the "educated". The real reason why Andy no longer has to do heavy physical work soon becomes apparent : From this point on, the guards repeatedly visit Andy for advice on financial matters. So it happens that he does the tax returns for the overseers . First for those in their own prison, a year later for those in the surrounding institutions. With constant inquiries from MPs and other politicians in the state, Andy receives a generous donation of books and money and, encouraged by his success, builds the prison library into one of the best in the country. He also gives classes with a final exam to obtain the GED (American university entrance qualification for second education).

One day Brooks Hatlen is suddenly released from prison after more than fifty years and gets a job in a supermarket . Since he no longer finds his way after half a century in prison in freedom and can not stand the pressure of solitude, he commits suicide , which his former fellow inmates by a suicide note out.

The years go by. Andy is increasingly drawn into the illegal financial machinations of the corrupt director Norton and launders large amounts of bribes for him when he carries out public contracts with the help of his inmates. Andy tells Red that the director will soon have over $ 500,000, and if he retires, he'll likely be a millionaire. Red objects that if anything about the bribes were ever publicized, Andy would be used as a scapegoat. Andy confirms the existence of a scapegoat named "Randall Stephens", a false identity that Andy invented and provided with all the necessary papers in the mail.

One day inmate Tommy Williams, a newcomer, reports on a perpetrator named Elmo Blatch who confessed to him in another prison on a crime very similar to the one Andy is said to have committed. Blatch mentioned that the victim's husband, a banker, had been convicted of the murder in his place. So it turns out that Andy is actually innocent and that Tommy's statements give him the opportunity to be set free. Andy tries to persuade Director Norton, citing this miscarriage of justice , to reopen his case, promising him to keep complete silence about the illegal business. Norton refuses, however, because he wants to keep Andy and his secrets in jail and not lose his talented accountant. This leads to an argument with the director, whereupon Andy has to spend first one month and then another month in solitary confinement in a windowless cell. In the meantime, the director had hadley's witness Tommy shot under the pretense of trying to escape, in order to take away any chance of Andy being released.

When Andy is released from solitary confinement, he looks broken. He talks to Red about his dreams, about a small place in Mexico on the Pacific , Zihuatanejo , where he wants to buy an old boat to renovate it, and about a small hotel that he wants to run. He makes Red promise - if he should ever be released - to go to Buxton, Maine, to look there in a stone wall on a tree for a certain black stone under which he will find something.

Red fears Andy might commit suicide like Brooks, which is reinforced by the fact that Andy has been given a long piece of rope. The information comes too late, however, because Red, like everyone else, has to go in to close the cell without having a chance to intervene.

The next morning Andy disappeared from his cell without a trace. Director Norton is furious, no one, not even Red, knows an answer. Norton throws stones from Andy's collection around the cell in anger. One of them breaks through a poster depicting Raquel Welch in a costume from A Million Years Before Our Time , whereupon the stone can be heard several times. Completely surprised, Norton tears the poster away and discovers a tunnel behind it: Andy has been secretly digging for 19 years with his little geologist's hammer on a round corridor that has been covered by various posters with a famous actress over the years. This leads out of his cell through the thick wall and ends between two prison buildings. From there a 500 yards (457 meters) long, thick sewer pipe leads to a nearby river and to freedom. Andy had spread the rubble through his trouser legs while walking in the prison yard without being noticed. Andy chose a thunderstorm as the time of its outbreak so that after crawling through the narrow tunnel he could smash the sewer pipe with a heavy stone without being heard. Then he got outside through the pipe with his waterproof packed utensils.

While the police unsuccessfully looking for him, Andy raises impeccably dressed under the already long before invented strawman identity Randall Stephens , the account holder, the bribes of the corrupt director of various banks and makes up in a red convertible , a Pontiac GTO , on the Way to Mexico. Before leaving, he had information about the crimes of Norton and Hadley sent to the local press. When the police arrive at the jail to arrest Byron Hadley and Director Norton, the latter realizes that Andy had taken his polished shoes and all documents unnoticed the previous evening and exchanged them for worthless ones, which he concealed in the back waistband of his jacket , carried with him while Norton opened the safe, covered by a plaque with the text: "His judgment is coming and that right soon ...". The director finds Andy's old shoes and in the safe said Bible, the inscription in the lid: “Dear Sir, you were right, salvation lies in the Bible!” Inside, from the chapter on Exodus, there is a hollow in the outline of the geologist's hammer , d. H. as a hiding place for the tool. The dedication is an ironic allusion to the director's words: “In it you will find salvation.” (English “Salvation lies within”) after completing a cell inspection years earlier, with which he handed Andy his Bible back through the bars with the undiscovered hammer . So cornered - the newspaper on his desk already reports the latest discoveries in Shawshank - Norton shoots himself just before the police open the door. Hadley is arrested.

The stamp on a postcard with no text informs Red a few days later that Andy left the United States via Fort Hancock, Texas . Red comes a short time later on probation -free and look like Brooks a job at the supermarket. He also stays in the same room in the guesthouse where Brooks hanged himself. At first, Red too cannot cope with the newly gained freedom and loneliness. He thinks about shooting himself or committing a crime in order to get back to prison. But one thing still keeps him alive: the promise to find this particular tree in Buxton on a field stone wall and look there for a black, volcanic stone like none other there. So Red hitchhiked his way to this spot. He finds what he is looking for under the black stone mentioned: In a tin can from the Benson's company with a picture of the RMS Queen Mary , money and a letter are hidden in which Andy invites him to visit him in Mexico and help him build a new life together . Red returns to his room, scratches the ceiling beam, in which Brooks had carved “BROOKS WAS HERE” (“Brooks was here”), the addition “SO WAS RED” (“Red too”) immediately before his suicide, and makes himself on the trip, hoping not to be immediately wanted by the police for violating the probation requirements .

In the end, Andy and Red meet on the Pacific beach in Zihuatanejo, Mexico and hug each other.

Differences to the novella

The film is based on the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (German: Pin-up in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Death ) by Stephen King . There are some parts of the film that differ from the original book:

• The prison directors change sporadically throughout the story, but in the film Norton remains the prison director the entire time.
• In the film, Andy passes incriminating documents to the press, whereupon the director shoots himself. This does not occur in the novella.
• In the novel, Andy briefly shares the cell with an Indian. This point was left out in the film.
• Red is an Irish American in the novella while he is an African American in the film . At one point in the film, Andy Red (played by Morgan Freeman ) asks, “Why do they call you that [Red]?” To which Red ironically replies, “Because I'm Irish, maybe”.
• In the novella, the prison guard tears the poster off. In the movie, Director Norton first throws a stone. This shows that there is a hole in the wall behind the poster. Only then does he tear it off.
• The beer that Warden Hadley gives as thanks for Andy's help is "pisswarm" in the story, according to Red. In the film, however, Red says that they drank iced beer.
• In the original book, Andy uses his own money, which he had secretly invested under an assumed name before the conviction, after his outbreak - the papers were in the hiding place Andy Red described (which makes Red even more admiring Andy because he had to always live with the fear that the hiding place no longer exists after the long years). In the film, he empties the accounts with the director's black money, making use of the identity of Randall Stephens, who was invented specifically for the director's illegal transactions.
• In the narrative, Andy never becomes the assistant to Brooks Hatlen's prison librarian.
• At the beginning of the film, the prison warden Norton inspects Andy's cell in order to better assess him. He almost finds the geologist's hammer. This scene does not appear in the novella.
• In the novella, warden Byron Hadley suffers a heart attack and is therefore retired, whereas in the film he is arrested for murder.
• In the book, Andy stays in prison for 27 years before breaking out; in the film he escapes after 19 years in prison.
• In the submission, Andy's possible witness, Tommy, is being transferred to another institution with far more comfortable prison conditions. In the film, the director of Byron Hadley had him shot.
• In the novella, the rapist Bogs Diamond is lightly beaten on Andy's behalf, in the film he is beaten up by the extremely sadistic guard Byron Hadley and sustains permanent damage.

Trivia

• Brad Pitt was slated to play the rebellious Thomas "Tommy" Williams . This finally played the Canadian actor Gil Bellows . In the US television series Ally McBeal , he also plays Ally's childhood sweetheart named William "Billy" Thomas .
• Andy puts on an LP in the film , the music of which is supposed to cheer up the inmates in prison. The recording is the so-called letter duet “Sull'aria… Che soave zeffiretto” from W. A. ​​Mozart's opera Le nozze di Figaro , recorded by the Deutsche Oper Berlin , conducted by Karl Böhm , sung by Edith Mathis and Gundula Janowitz .
• The book The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas is briefly mentioned in the film when Andy and the other inmates sort books. The protagonists of the book (Edmond Dantès) and the film (Andy Dufresne) show several parallels. Both end up innocent in prison and both manage to escape in the end.
• To get ideas from other films, is director had Frank Darabont that every Sunday Mafia - Drama Goodfellas - Three decades in the Mafia considered.
• During the film, inmates watch the film noir Gilda starring Hollywood legend Rita Hayworth .
• At the end of the film the sentence appears: "In Memory of Allen Greene". This sentence is dedicated to Frank Darabont's agent and friend, who died shortly before filming of The Condemned .
• According to the users of the Internet Movie Database , the film is the best of all time (as of May 2020).
• Actor Morgan Freeman was the first to receive the role offer to play the imprisoned Red. After his acceptance, he was allowed to choose his partner from a list of actors, who is supposed to portray the inmate Andy Dufresne in the film. Freeman's choice ultimately fell on Tim Robbins.
• In the German dubbing, a mistake crept in when Andy asks the supervisor Hadley about the beer. In the original he asks for "three beers apiece for each of my coworkers". In the German translation it became "for me and my colleagues", which contradicts his subsequent statement that he had given up drinking ("No thanks, gave up drinking").

References in other media

• In the animated series Drawn Together , a ball of wool sock beard alludes to Brooks' release from prison.
• From the animated series The Simpsons there is an episode with the German title The Condemned ( Season 15 ; in the original: The Wandering Juvie ). The same embroidery also hangs in the youth prison director's office as in director Norton's office (“His Judgment cometh and that right soon ...”).
• In the episode The Big Eat of the Simpsons ( season 16 ; in the original The Heartbroke Kid ), the obese beard hides his forbidden sweets in a hole in the wall behind a black and white poster with Krusty in a lascivious pose, analogous to the Rita Hayworth poster .
• In another Simpsons episode ( I do not know why the captive bird sings , Season 19 , originally I Do not Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ) escapes a prison inmate Andy through the drain pipe.
• In the animated series Family Guy , the film is parodied in the episode Three Times King (season 7, episode 15; in the original Three Kings ).
• The filmmaker duo JibJab , who became famous through various short cartoons on the Internet , produced a parody of the film, Shawshank in a Minute , in which the plot of the film is summarized in two and a half minutes, but with a strongly humorous background with a script performed in rap style .
• In the 2006 film Living High by Mekhi Phifer , it's a running gag that the two protagonists Larry and Rico keep trying to watch The Condemned on pay TV and fail to make it to the end of the film.
• In the computer game Secret Files 3 , the prison game scene alludes to the poster of Rita Hayworth and the carved chess pieces in a cell.
• In the 2013 video game Lego City Undercover , a chapter set in prison parodies the film. The scene in which Andy locks out the prison director and hits the prison yard with The Marriage of Figaro is re- enacted in great detail with quotes from the film that are partly literal and partly satirical.
• In the last film in the Die-Nackte Kanone trilogy, namely Die Nackte Kanone 33⅓ , Frank Drebin ( Leslie Nielsen ) escapes from prison through a tunnel he dug himself. Just like Andy Dufresne, he makes the rubble that is created by digging the tunnel disappear through his pants in the prison yard - a technique that is also used in the film Broken Chains .
• On the television series Suits , Mike quotes Ross Red as saying, "I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes" after he bluffed perfectly.
• In the film Half Baked , with US comedian Dave Chappelle in the lead role, several scenes from the film are parodied, including the raven chick of inmate Brook (here a squirrel) and the posters for women in Andy's cell.
• In the first season of the TV series Prison Break , the prisoners let the rubble produced during the breakout fall out of their trouser legs.
• In the TV series Orange Is the New Black , Kate Mulgrew plays a prisoner named Red who has been incarcerated for many years.
• In the comedy film Hangover 3 , Leslie Chow also hides his escape tunnel behind a poster.

synchronization

The film was set to music at Magma Synchron in Berlin based on a dialogue book and directed by Joachim Kunzendorf.

role	actor	Voice actor
Andy Dufresne	Tim Robbins	Tobias Master
Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding	Morgan Freeman	Klaus Sunshine
Samuel Norton	Bob Gunton	Ernst Meincke
Heywood	William Sadler	Michael Christian
Brooks Hatlen	James Whitmore	Gerry Wolff
Tommy Williams	Gil Bellows	Charles Rettinghaus
Captain Byron Hadley	Clancy Brown	Klaus-Dieter Klebsch
Bogs Diamond	Mark Rolston	Tom Vogt
Prosecutor	Jeffrey DeMunn	Frank-Otto Schenk

Reviews

source	rating
Rotten tomatoes
critic
audience
Metacritic
critic
audience
IMDb

In the IMDb, the film received 9.3 out of a possible 10 stars with 2.25 million ratings (as of June 2020), occupies first place in the list of the best 250 films since 2008 calculated from user ratings and is one of the only four Films of this ranking that have 9.0 or more stars.

“Director Frank Darabont wrote and directed the touching drama based on a short story by Stephen King. The fact that the epic film never gets boring is thanks to a perfectly harmonious cast of actors. Especially Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, from whose point of view The Condemned is told, convince with their moving, economical gestures. "

- Cinema.de

“The film shows the monotony and harshness of life behind bars in a leisurely rhythm. 19 years pass without any noticeable changes in the figures, without external effects, but also without concise escalations beyond the usual confrontations. A remarkable film due to its unspectacular narrative style; but too casual for long stretches when concentrating on the final punch. "

- Lexicon of international film

"In the end, The Condemned is definitely one of the best prison films and also an excellent representation of a lifelong friendship."

- Filmstarts.de

"The unapologetic, impressive game by Freeman and Robbins and the wonderful screenplay by director Frank Darabont [...] make The Condemned an intelligent, captivating film."

- Joanna Berry : 1001 Films: You Should See Before Life Is Over

Awards

The Condemned was nominated for an Oscar in 1995 in seven categories, namely Best Picture , Best Actor (Morgan Freeman), Best Adapted Screenplay , Best Cinematography , Best Editing , Best Sound and Best Film Music . However, he had to admit defeat to the film Forrest Gump alone in four categories ( Best Film , Best Actor ( Tom Hanks ), Best Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay ); other films (like The Lion King ) won the three other categories.

The film was nominated for Best Actor - Drama (Morgan Freeman) and Best Screenplay at the 1995 Golden Globe Awards - but lost to Forrest Gump ( Best Actor - Drama (Tom Hanks)) and Pulp Fiction ( Best Screenplay ( Quentin Tarantino ) ).

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden has given the film the rating “particularly valuable”.

The film won the following awards:

• 1995: American Society of Cinematographers - Roger Deakins
• 1995: Camerimage - Roger Deakins
• 1995: Chlotrudis Awards for Best Actor - Morgan Freeman
• 1995: Heartland Film Festival - Frank Darabont
• 1995: Humanitas Prize - Frank Darabont
• 1995: USC Scripter Award - Frank Darabont, Stephen King
• 1996: Two Kinema Junpo Awards - Frank Darabont (Best Foreign Film)
• 1996: Mainichi Eiga Concours - Frank Darabont (Best Foreign Film)
• 1996: Japanese Academy Award - Best Foreign Film

Book publication

• Spring awakening. Pin up. In: Stephen King: Seasons. Spring Summer. Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1987, ISBN 3-404-13115-0 , pp. 7-124 (first edition of the German licensed edition; translator: Harro Christensen).

Web links

• The condemned in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• The convicts in the online film database
• The Shawshank Redemption at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
• The Shawshank Redemption at Metacritic (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} IMDb best 250 .
2. ↑ In 2019, a purchasing power of over 2 million US dollars .
3. ↑ In German the punch line was almost spoiled, because the original text says: “Erlösung [d. H. the hammer] was in her. "- English:" Dear Warden, you were right, Salvation lay within. "
4. ↑ The Charlie Rose Show : Round-table discussion with Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman and Frank Darabont, 2004, 38 min. To be found in the bonus material of the double DVD The Condemned (EuroVideo Bildprogramm GmbH, Ismaning).
5. ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | The condemned. Retrieved April 5, 2018 . 
6. ↑ ^{a b} shaw at Rotten Tomatoes , accessed on February 28, 2015 (English).
7. ↑ ^{a b} The Shawshank Redemption at Metacritic , accessed on February 28, 2015.
8. ↑ The Condemned. Internet Movie Database , accessed November 11, 2017 . 
9. ↑ Top Rated Movies (English).
10. ^ Film review , Cinema.de .
11. ↑ The Condemned. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .  
12. ^ Film review , Filmstarts.de .
13. ↑ Joanna Berry: 1001 Films: You Should See Before Life Is Over . Zurich 2004, ISBN 978-3-283-01158-1 , p. 834.
14. ↑ The Condemned . In: fbw-filmbeval.com .