''The Innocent'' is a 1993 drama film directed by

John Schlesinger John Richard Schlesinger (; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for ''Midnight Cowboy'', and was nominated for the same award for two other films ('' Darling'' an ...

. The screenplay was written by

Ian McEwan Ian Russell McEwan, (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of th ...

and based on his 1990 novel of the same name. The film stars

Anthony Hopkins Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins (born 31 December 1937) is a Welsh actor, director, and producer. One of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actors, he is known for his performances on the screen and stage. Hopkins has received many accolad ...

Isabella Rossellini Isabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini (born 18 June 1952) is an Italian-American actress, author, philanthropist, and model. The daughter of the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and the Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, she is noted ...

, and

Campbell Scott Campbell Scott (born July 19, 1961) is an American actor, producer and director. His roles include Steve Dunne in '' Singles'', Mark Usher in '' House of Cards'', Joseph Tobin in ''Damages'', and Richard Parker in '' The Amazing Spider-Man'' an ...

. It was released in the USA in 1995.

Plot

The film takes place in 1950s

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

at the height of the Cold War and centres around the joint

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

real-life

Operation Gold Operation Gold (also known as Operation Stopwatch by the British) was a joint operation conducted by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British MI6 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in the 1950s to tap into landline communic ...

: building a tunnel under the Russian sector of Berlin.

Cast

as Bob Glass *

as Maria *

as Leonard Markham *Ronald Nitschke as Otto *

Hart Bochner Hart Matthew Bochner (born October 3, 1956) is a Canadian actor, film director, screenwriter and producer. He has appeared in films such as ''Breaking Away'' (1979), ''Terror Train'' (1980), '' Rich and Famous'' (1981), '' The Wild Life'' (1984), ...

as Russell *James Grant as Macnamee * Jeremy Sinden as Captain Lofting *

Richard Durden Mark Richard Durden-Smith (born 8 February 1944), known as Richard Durden, is an English actor, with a range of television, film and stage credits. Personal life Durden-Smith was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College and Merton ...

as Black * Corey Johnson as Lou *Richard Good as Piper I Rossellini A Hopkins

Release and reception

The movie spent 12 months in studio quarantine, and was released domestically in September 1995 without advance screenings for critics.Caryn James,
Anthony Hopkins as a Brash Yank
" ''The New York Times'', September 2, 1995. In ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', film critic Caryn James wrote, "It's not a good omen for 'The Innocent' that the prototypical Yank turns out to be Anthony Hopkins, the shy Englishman Leonard is played by the American Campbell Scott and the German woman who intrigues them is Isabella Rossellini... But ''The Innocent'', which has been on the shelf for at least a year and was dumped in theaters yesterday without advance screenings, eventually overcomes its obstacles and almost lives up to its promising pedigree. You can trust Ian McEwan, who wrote the screenplay from his 1990 novel, to turn this fraught political situation into a dark, paranoid love story. And you can count on the director John Schlesinger (whose most famous film is ''

Midnight Cowboy ''Midnight Cowboy'' is a 1969 American drama film, based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. The film was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, with notable smaller ...

'' and most recent is the efficient thriller ''

Pacific Heights Pacific Heights is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. It has panoramic views of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, the Palace of Fine Arts, Alcatraz, and the Presidio. The Pacific Heights Residents Association defines the neig ...

'') to bring it to life with a commanding sense of its increasingly complex elements. What begins as a low-key tale of espionage, with allies spying on each other and everybody's motives in doubt, becomes a tense and suspenseful love story with Hitchcockian overtones." Rita Kempley in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', on the other hand, called the movie "baffling." She continued, "The acting proves as inconsistent as Schlesinger's ability to build and release suspense. In full swagger, Hopkins seems to be doing Teddy Roosevelt in preparation for the title role in ''

Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

''. Rossellini recalls her mother, Ingrid Bergman, in an airport farewell scene that echoes '' Casablanca''. It doesn't detract from the actress's work, but it does invite negative comparisons. Talk about amounting to a hill of beans." Upon its September 1995 USA release,

Stephen Hunter Stephen Hunter (born March 25, 1946, Kansas City, Missouri) is an American novelist, essayist, and film critic. Life and career Hunter was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in Evanston, Illinois. His father was Charles Francis Hunter, ...

wrote: "What an odd, chilly cup of tea is John Schlesinger's ''The Innocent''. It slipped into the Greenspring with a great cast–Anthony Hopkins, Campbell Scott and Isabella Rossellini–but without benefit of a screening, a commercial decision that seemed foolish at the time but now seems the quintessence of marketing wisdom. The movie turns out to be a spy thriller set in the Berlin of the '50s. But just about every note is brightly, noisily false. In fact, the movie is so wrong from start to finish it's some kind of monument to human folly... It becomes a lame, bad parody of '' Casablanca'', complete with airport, twin-engine prop plane, raincoats and Ingrid Bergman, or at least a facsimile thereof in the shape of her daughter, Rossellini. Why Rossellini would agree to such a tasteless twist on her mother in such an otherwise undistinguished film is one of the great astonishments of our time; why the great director of '' Sunday, Bloody Sunday'' and '' Darling'' would consider it himself is another."

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Innocent, The 1993 films 1990s American films 1990s British films 1990s English-language films 1990s thriller films American spy films British spy films Cold War spy films Films about the Berlin Wall Films about the Central Intelligence Agency Films based on British novels Films directed by John Schlesinger Films set in Berlin Films set in West Germany Films shot in Germany