Dolores Claiborne (1995) on Netflix
Dolores Claiborne, a maid on a Maine island, is accused of killing her employer, Vera Donovan. Her estranged daughter Selena, a New York journalist, returns to a town that doubts her mother.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.4/1053,994 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
On Little Tall Island in Maine, Dolores Claiborne works as housekeeper and companion to Vera Donovan, an elderly, partly paralyzed woman in a large house. When Vera falls down the stairs and dies, Dolores is found standing over her, and the local police open a murder investigation. Her daughter Selena, a journalist in New York, comes back to the island to support her mother, though she has doubts of her own. Detective John Mackey, who led the inquiry into the death of Dolores's husband Joe eighteen years earlier, wants her put away for life. Much of the town still believes Dolores killed Joe. Dolores says she did not kill Vera, and Vera's will, which leaves Dolores the fortune, gives the police another reason to press her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dolores Claiborne (1995)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The solar-eclipse sequence was built without computer effects by dismantling the St. George house and rebuilding it on a hockey-arena sound stage, but a pricing mistake by the inexperienced effects company pushed that one sequence 500% over its budget.
- To make Christopher Plummer look like a haggard small-town cop instead of a magazine model, he drew a scar across his nose with an eyebrow pencil after director Taylor Hackford grew frustrated with the costume department's polished look for him.
- For scenes meant to signal buried trauma resurfacing, Hackford deliberately staged shots to echo paintings by Belgian surrealist René Magritte, including when Dolores smashes her window with an axe.
- Screenwriter Tony Gilroy was initially turned off by how the story was told, describing the whole narrative as "one long slog of a monologue from Dolores" that felt one dimensional and, in his own words, raw and unrevised.
- In a later retrospective interview, Kathy Bates said that her performance as the titular Dolores was the favorite performance she had ever given in her career.
- In 2014, the magazine Time named the film Dolores Claiborne one of the top ten greatest movie adaptations to be made from the writing of Stephen King.
- The film's flashbacks were shot on Fuji stock for bright, vivid pastels, while the present was filmed on cold, blue Kodak film made harsher by desaturating the codec, keeping the two timelines visually apart.
- Actress Ellen Muth won a Best Supporting Actress prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival for her role in the film.
