Movies Made Here: Reversal of Fortune (1990)

If you need a mansion for your movie, you go to Newport, RI and…Tarrytown! Perhaps the most popular of our stately homes eager for location-scouting, is the grand estate of Lyndhurst which has figured prominently in one of my Movies Made Here reviews so far, namely, The House of Dark Shadows (which is coming again soon with a Tim Burton remake starring Johnny Depp of course).

Now we're onto Reversal of Fortune, which I didn't realize until I recognized a man who looked like Alan Dershowitz in it, that it was in fact based on the true story of the von Bulow case whose controversial appeal famed lawyer Dershowitz took on. 

Unlike many courtroom drama movies whose settings I find a bit drab, this movie more interestingly took the approach of pre-trial preparations, as Dershowitz and his band of college student volunteers research the case of Claus and his comatose wife Sunny. 

Sunny, played in druggy perfection by Glenn Close, speaks to us from the dark side of her coma, which was chemically induced, though it remains unclear by whom. It turns out she is quite the lady of luxury/pills, but her husband, played by Jeremy Irons, who sounds like a vampire, is indeed something of a vampire in the movie and seems very guilty indeed, even when he is exonerated for two alleged murder attempts on his wife. 

Sunny, even in a coma is unstoppable. It's fitting that she speaks her part from the coma, perhaps a place that makes her happier than normal life. In real life, she lived out decades in this vegetative state until the age of 76 (she died fairly recently, in 2008).

Lyndhurst gets to play the interiors of what is supposed to be a Newport mansion. Newport is only filmed from afar, by helicopter in the opening. At the "Breakers" below you can see the tourists if you squint. 

Anyone who was working at Lyndhurst during filmmaking is gone, so I referred instead to this NY Times article from 1997 "Lyndhurst Earning Keep as a Film Site" which certainly made me think they need to do more of this to continue to earn their keep, and not .

I also learned from this article about another movie made here that I hadn't had on my list. So stay tuned for Gloria, with Sharon Stone and Jeremy Northan.