Shutter Island: The Design

Kirkbride’s idea was to design Cathedral-like sanctuaries for the mentally ill that would give them a peaceful, elegant, morally ordered world to live up to. Unfortunately, in the end, many of these facilities would be under-funded and overpopulated, their vast halls turned eerie with deterioration and neglect.

Several Kirkbride Plan hospitals were built in Massachusetts but, by now, all have been converted into condos or fallen into total disrepair. 

However, the filmmakers found one abandoned asylum that could fit the bill: Medfield State Hospital in Medfield, Massachusetts, which had been closed since the 1960s, but never refurbished. 

Although the hospital is not one of Kirkbride’s personal designs, it features a similar collection of two-story, red brick buildings on sprawling grounds, a classic asylum look that could be used as a raw shell for Ferretti’s creations.  

Occupying the buildings, however, would take an intensive process.  Using Kirkbride’s blueprints as his guide, Ferretti recreated a chilling embodiment of a 1950s psychiatric institute. 

Long before the start of filming at Medfield, Ferretti presented Scorsese and Richardson with an entire miniature, three-dimensional model of the Ashecliffe compound, enabling them to map out precise blocking of scenes, positioning actors for every camera move. The real thing, however, was even more evocative. 

"My job was very clear," says the two-time Academy Award®-winning production designer, who garnered Oscars® for Scorsese’s The Aviator and, more recently, for Sweeney Todd.  "Marty wanted American Gothic and so American Gothic is what we created on the grounds of Medfield."

He continues: "I designed several Gothic-looking entrances and additions to the buildings that were already standing. Then, we built a long, rectangular wall around the buildings and the grounds not only to create a compound, but also to give a sense that we were in a confined, almost prison-like space, even to suggest that we were on an island within an island. 

"We also created a lush-looking lawn within the compound, with flowerbeds and rock gardens that the patients carefully tend. We also reworked and redesigned all the interiors, including the orderlies’ quarters and rest areas, the hospital corridors, the cafeteria, Dr. Cawley’s office and the patients’ quarters. 

"I’d say we built 60% of what you see at Medfield from scratch.  We even built Ashecliffe’s graveyard, which is key to the plot."

To stand in for Ashecliffe’s imposing executive mansion, off-limits to most staff and patients, the production moved to the intensely Gothic grounds of the Turner Hill Golf Club in Ipswich, Mass. 

Here, inside the mansion’s baronial, wood-lined sitting room dominated by an oversized fireplace, Scorsese staged the hostile encounter between Teddy and Chuck on the one side, and Dr. Cawley and Dr. Naehring on the other. 

In addition, Rachel Solando’s cell, from which the barefoot woman mystically vanishes, was constructed from scratch in a Medfield warehouse. 

Later, Ferretti would metamorphose an abandoned textile mill in Taunton, Massachusetts into a section of the Dachau concentration camp, where Teddy Daniels, as a young soldier, has a seminal confrontation with humanity’s destructive power, replete with barbed wire, fenced-in compounds and a rundown railroad transport carriage.

For the cast, these sets were a kind of vehicle, transporting them into another world beyond everyday reality. 

Says Patricia Clarkson: "The set for my scene in the cave was extraordinary from the second you walked in.  It was cavernous, ominous, frightening and it even seemed to have a smell to it, although it didn’t.  It was incredibly real and alive and that set the tone."

Adds Jackie Earle Haley: "The sets were a trip and incredibly motivating.  When I went into my cell and they shut the door it was very dark and isolated. 

"It didn’t feel at all like a movie set.  The walls were all in place and you’d pound on something and be surprised that it wasn’t really brick.  I think that really added to our state of mind as actors."

Later, Oscar®-winning visual effects supervisor Rob Legato (Titanic, Apollo 13, The Aviator) and visual effects producer/post production supervisor Ron Ames (The Departed) would create further magic by scattering dramatic clouds and skyscapes into sunnier shots and intensifying the film’s shades of grey with digital nuances. 

"They helped to create the very special look of the cliffs, the water, the cave, the sky, and this also became part of the creation of a state of mind," says Scorsese.  "It was a major challenge all very, very well-thought-out shot by shot."

Another previous Scorsese collaborator, costume designer Sandy Powell, added to the details and depth of Shutter Island’s all-enveloping world. Twice an Academy Award® winner, for The Aviator and John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love, Powell’s body of work has spanned many eras and lifestyles, but she had never entered the unusual realm of a 1950s mental institute before. 

She began her work by talking with Scorsese about his view of the characters."He gave me ideas, insights and guidelines that were indispensable," she recalls.  "For instance, he said about Teddy, Leo’s character, ‘He’s not particularly well paid. 

"He’s an ordinary kind of guy.’  Immediately, I then knew the direction I wanted to go in.  Shutter Island is all about what’s going on inside the characters, so my challenge was to make what the actors wear believable for that journey."

The compressed, fast-paced time frame of the story was also a challenge. "It takes place over four days, so there’s not much scope to change the characters’ clothes progressively," she explains. "Most of the characters wear one or two costumes, yet those costumes go through a lot. 

"We had to make 44 versions of the orderly outfit Teddy puts on because it is drenched and rumpled in the hurricane and he goes through different adventures in it; he goes into the sea, walks along cliffs, and sleeps in a cave. He passes through various stages of dirtiness, if you will, and that was a process."

Also key to Powell’s work in Shutter Island is color, which in itself is so linked to psychology. "Color is the first thing I think about and it’s usually an instinctive feeling," she explains. 

"For example, with Dolores, I just had this feeling she should be wearing yellow and her dress plays throughout the film, so I had to get it absolutely right. 

On the other hand, Ben Kingsley chose the color of his costume.  He told me he felt that his character should be in green.  So, together we came up with the right shade, a deep, dark, almost olive that suits the doctor’s intensity."
 
In search of authenticity, Powell sought out vintage pieces but mostly created her own.  "Suiting fabrics in the ‘40s and ‘50s were actually much heavier than they are today," she notes.  "So for Leo and Mark’s suits we had to find contemporary fabrics that matched the vintage ones as best they could and build them from scratch. 

"For Max von Sydow’s character, Dr. Naehring, I had a very strong idea that I wanted him in dark black with a strong stripe and I couldn’t find the proper weight, so we wove our own fabric.  I did use some original clothing for Michelle Williams’ character."

Weaving the film’s equally vital aural fabric is music supervisor Robbie Robertson, who has known Scorsese since the director filmed Robertson’s seminal rock ensemble, The Band, in The Last Waltz. 

Recalls Scorsese: "Instead of writing a conventional score, I said to Robbie, ‘What if we took some modern composers of the 20th century and some popular songs and moved elements of those around to create a wall of sound?’, and he liked that idea.

"We pulled together pieces by Krzysztof Penderecki, Max Richter, Ingram Marshall, Marcel Duchamp, Morton Feldman, Giacinto Scelsi, Nam June Paik, John Adams, Brian Eno and Robert Erickson and used them in different ways throughout. 

"There’s also some popular songs from the early ‘50s, including Johnny Ray’s ‘Cry,’ Kay Starr’s ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and Lonnie Johnson’s ‘Tomorrow Night.’  What Robbie did with the music was to create a kind of tapestry of what Teddy, Chuck, Dr. Cawley and all of them are feeling as the days and story unfold."

Shutter Island is out now.

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