From the iconic ballroom scene in The Great Gatsby (1974), to the Newport Mansions inspiring and featured in HBO's The Gilded Age, take a look at the following movies and shows filmed in and around Newport. 

1 MOONRISE KINGDOM

Length:
1hr 34min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, Apple TV, YouTube
Year:
2012

Set on an island off the coast of New England in the 1960s, as a young boy and girl fall in love they are moved to run away together. Various factions of the town mobilize to search for them and the town is turned upside down - which might not be such a bad thing.

 

Iconic Sights:

 

Moonrise Kingdom

2 TRUE LIES

Length:
2hr 21 min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Youtube
Year:
1994

Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a secret agent in the Bond style. But his wife Helen and family think he is a computer salesman. When Helen seeks out a life of excitement in the arms of another man (Bill Paxton), Harry sets out to give her the excitement she craves while simultaneously battling Arab terrorists in possession of an atomic bomb and causing his rival in love to change his trousers.

 

Iconic Sights:

 

3 AMISTAD

Length:
2h 35min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Paramount +, Showtime, YouTube
Year:
1997

Amistad is based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave ship La Amistad, during which Mende tribesmen abducted for the slave trade managed to gain control of their captors' ship off the coast of Cuba. The film follows the international legal battle that followed their capture by the Washington, a U.S. revenue cutter. The case was ultimately resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1841.

 

Iconic Sights:

 

4 THE GREAT GATSBY

Length:
2hr 24 min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Netflix, Paramount+, YouTube
Year:
1974

Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston) is a young man from the Midwest living modestly among the decadent mansions of 1920s Long Island. He becomes involved in the life of the mysterious Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford), a rich man who throws the most lavish parties on the island. But behind Gastby's outgoing demeanor is a lonely man who wants nothing more than to be with his old love, Daisy (Mia Farrow). She is married to the bullheaded Tom (Bruce Dern), creating a love triangle that will end in tragedy.

 


Iconic Sights: 

Rosecliff

5 THE DISCOVERY

Length:
1hr 42 min
Where to Watch:
Netflix
Year:
2017

Robert Redford returns to Newport. 

Due to a breakthrough scientific discovery by Dr. Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford), there is now definitive proof of an afterlife. While countless people have chosen suicide to reset their existence, others try to decide what it all means. Among them is Dr. Harbor's son Will, who has arrived at his father's isolated compound with a mysterious young woman named Isla. There, they discover the strange acolytes who help Dr. Harbor with his experiments.

 
Iconic Sights:

 

6 HIGH SOCIETY

Length:
1hr 51min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Tubi, YouTube
Year:
1956

C.K. Dexter-Haven, a successful popular jazz musician, lives in a mansion near his ex-wife's Tracy Lord's family estate. She is on the verge of marrying a man blander and safer than Dex, who tries to win Tracy's heart again. Mike Connor, an undercover tabloid reporter, also falls for Tracy while covering the nuptials for the fictional Spy Magazine. Tracy must choose between the three men as she discovers that "safe" can mean "deadly dull" when it comes to husbands and life.

Fun-fact: The opening of the film, Louis Armstrong is singing with his band on his way to a Jazz festival—you know the scene—it turns out that festival and song is a nod to our very own Newport Jazz Festival. 

 

Iconic Sights:
  • Clarendon Court (Privately owned), Newport
  • Bellevue Avenue

 

7 27 DRESSES

Length:
1hr 51min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Hulu, YouTube
Year:
2008
After serving as a bridesmaid 27 times, a young woman wrestles with the idea of standing by her sister's side as her sibling marries the man she's secretly in love with.


Iconic Sights: 

 

8 IRRATIONAL MAN

Length:
1hr 36min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, Apple TV, YouTube
Year:
2015

A tormented philosophy professor finds a will to live when he commits an existential act.

 


Iconic Sights:

 

9 EVENING

Length:
2h 10min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, AppleTV, YouTube
Year:
2007

A drama exploring the romantic past and emotional present of Ann Lord (Vanessa Redgrave) and her daughters, Constance Haverford (Natasha Richardson) and Nina Mars (Toni Collette). As Ann lays dying, she remembers, and is moved to convey to her daughters, the defining moments in her life fifty years ago, when she was a young woman. Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson) is the man Ann loves in the 1950s and never forgets.

 

Iconic Sights:
  • Filmed entirely in Newport and Tiverton

 

10 ME, MYSELF & IRENE

Length:
1hr 56min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Starz, YouTube
Year:
2000

A nice-guy cop with Dissociative Identity Disorder must protect a woman on the run from a corrupt ex-boyfriend and his associates.

 

Iconic Sights:
  • Ocean Drive, Brenton Point, Newport
  • Narragansett Avenue, Jamestown


Ocean Drive

11 MR. NORTH

Length:
1hr 33min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Roku, Tubi
Year:
1988

Mr. North, a stranger to a small, but wealthy, Rhode Island town, quickly has rumors started about him that he has the power to heal people's ailments. The rumors are magnified by his tendency to collect negative charges and give shocks to anyone he touches. In his adventures he befriends an old man who is a shut-in and helps him rediscover the world.

 

 

Iconic Sights:

 

12 WIND

Length:
1h 32min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Tubi, YouTube
Year:
1992

Will Parker, played by Matthew Modine, loses the Americas Cup, the worlds biggest sailing prize, to the Australians and decides to form his own syndicate to win it back.


Iconic Sights:
  • The Elms, Newport
  • Throughout Jamestown

 

13 REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

Length:
1hr 51min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, AppleTV, YouTube
Year:
1990

Wealthy Sunny von Bülow lies brain-dead, husband Claus guilty of attempted murder; but he says he's innocent and hires Alan Dershowitz for his appeal.


Iconic Sights:
  • Clarendon Court (Privately Owned), Newport

 

14 LOLITA

Length:
2hr 34min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Tubi, YouTube
Year:
1962

Humbert Humbert, a divorced British professor of French literature, travels to small-town America for a teaching position. He allows himself to be swept into a relationship with Charlotte Haze, his widowed and sexually famished landlady, whom he marries in order that he might pursue the woman's 14-year-old flirtatious daughter, Lolita, with whom he has fallen hopelessly in love, but whose affections shall be thwarted by a devious trickster named Clare Quilty.


Iconic Sights:
  • Brick Market Place, Newport

 

15 THE BETSY

Length:
2hr 5min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, AppleTV, YouTube
Year:
1978

The patriarch of a family-owned corporation hires a young race car driver to help him design a fuel efficient car in secrecy. They face resistance from the president of the company (the patriarch's grandson), who wishes to eliminate the motor car division because of bad blood between himself and his grandfather. During flashbacks, a parallel set of problems is revealed in the family's past, problems that persist into the present, and the race car driver gets deeper into the web of deception and corporate intrigue.


Iconic Sights:

 

16 HEAVEN'S GATE

Length:
3hr 39min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, AppleTV
Year:
1980

Wyoming, 1890. James Averill is the Sherriff of Johnson County, a county largely inhabited by foreign immigrants. The wealthy cattle owners view the immigrant farmers as a nuisance and hindrance to them enlarging their own land. The cattlemen's association, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, effectively declares war on the immigrant farmers, and gets the state government's blessing. They assemble an army of guns-for-hire, and, backed by the U.S. Cavalry, set out to rid the state of the immigrants. James Averill's heart is with the immigrants, but he is not sure they have a chance of winning the inevitable war.


Iconic Sights:

 

17 DAN IN REAL LIFE

Length:
1hr 38min
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Disney+, YouTube
Year:
2007

A widower finds out the woman he fell in love with is his brother's girlfriend.


Iconic Sights:
  • Ocean Drive, Newport
  • East Ferry Wharf, Jamestown
  • Mackerel Cove, Jamestown

 

18 HOCUS POCUS 2

Length:
1HR 43MIN
Where to Watch:
Disney+
Year:
2022

Three young women accidentally bring back the Sanderson Sisters to modern day Salem and must figure out how to stop the child-hungry witches from wreaking havoc on the world.

Fun-fact: This film is set in Salem, MA, but was filmed entirely in Rhode Island and frequently in Newport. They set up a "Salem Scare Fest" in Washington Square, used aerial footage of downtown Newport and more.

 

Iconic Sites:

 

19 Bonus: The Gilded Age

Where to Watch:
Max (by HBO)
Year:
2022 & 2023

While this technically is not a movie, this cinematic show premiered season 1 in January 2022 and season 2 in October 2023, and follows the story of "old" and "new money" in New York's high society, set in 1882. This Julian Fellowes masterpiece was filmed at and features many Newport Mansion properties;  The Breakers, Marble House, The Elms, Rosecliff, Chateau-sur-Mer and Hunter House. Stream the first two seasons of The Gilded Age now on Max (by HBO.)

 

Iconic Sites:

 

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