The Innocent (1993 film)

1993 German film

The Innocent

Theatrical release poster

Directed by| John Schlesinger
Written by| Ian McEwan
Based on| The Innocent
by Ian McEwan
Produced by| Norma Heyman
Wieland Schulz-Keil [de]
Chris Sievernich [de]
Starring| Anthony Hopkins
Isabella Rossellini
Campbell Scott
Cinematography| Dietrich Lohmann
Edited by| Richard Marden
Music by| Gerald Gouriet
Distributed by| Entertainment Film Distributors (United Kingdom)
Miramax (United States)

Release dates

* September 16, 1993 (1993-09-16) (Germany[1])
* June 24, 1994 (1994-06-24) (United Kingdom)

Running time

| 107 minutes[1]
Countries| Germany
United Kingdom
Language| English
Box office| $553,000 (USA)[2]

The Innocent is a 1993 drama film directed by John Schlesinger. The screenplay was written by Ian McEwan and based on his 1990 novel of the same name. The film stars Anthony Hopkins, Isabella Rossellini, and Campbell Scott. It was released in the US in 1995.

## Plot

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The film takes place in 1950s Berlin at the height of the Cold War and centres around the joint CIA/MI6 real-life[1] Operation Gold: building a tunnel under the Russian sector of Berlin.

## Cast

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* Anthony Hopkins as Bob Glass
* Isabella Rossellini as Maria
* Campbell Scott as Leonard Markham
* Ronald Nitschke as Otto
* Hart Bochner as Russell
* James Grant as Macnamee
* Jeremy Sinden as Captain Lofting
* Richard Durden as Black
* Corey Johnson as Lou
* Richard Good as Piper

Rossellini and Hopkins on location at Berlin Tempelhof Airport

## Release and reception

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The film had a double world premiere in Berlin in English and German on 16 September 1993.[1] It opened on 4 screens in the United Kingdom on 24 June 1994 and grossed £15,436 for the weekend.[3]

The movie spent 12 months in studio quarantine, and was released in the United States in September 1995 without advance screenings for critics.[4] In The New York Times, 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 and most recent is the efficient thriller Pacific Heights) 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."[4]

Rita Kempley in The Washington Post, on the other hand,[5] 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. 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 US release,[4][6] Stephen 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

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1. ^ a b c d Rebecca Lieb (20 September 1993). "Review: The Innocent". Variety. Retrieved 2015-06-06. "Pic double world-preemed Sept. 16 in Berlin, with English and German-dubbed versions unspooling in separate locations."
2. ^ "Box office/Business for The Innocent". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2015-06-06.
3. ^ "UK this week". Screen International. 1 July 1994. p. 34.
4. ^ a b c Caryn James, "Anthony Hopkins as a Brash Yank," The New York Times, September 2, 1995.
5. ^ Rita Kempley, "The Innocent," The Washington Post, September 2, 1995.
6. ^ Michael Wilmington (22 September 1995). "Romantic, Suspenseful Innocent Suggestive Of Hitchcock". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2015-06-06.

## External links

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Innocent (1993 film).

* The Innocent at IMDb
* The Innocent at Rotten Tomatoes
* The Innocent at Box Office Mojo

* v
* t
* e

Films directed by John Schlesinger

Feature films|

* A Kind of Loving (1962)
* Billy Liar (1963)
* Darling (1965)
* Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)
* Midnight Cowboy (1969)
* Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
* The Day of the Locust (1975)
* Marathon Man (1976)
* Yanks (1979)
* Honky Tonk Freeway (1981)
* The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
* The Believers (1987)
* Madame Sousatzka (1988)
* Pacific Heights (1990)
* The Innocent (1993)
* Eye for an Eye (1996)
* The Next Best Thing (2000)

Documentary|

* Terminus (1961)
* Israel: A Right to Live (1967)
* Visions of Eight (1973)

Television|

* An Englishman Abroad (1983)
* A Question of Attribution (1991)
* Cold Comfort Farm (1995)
* The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1997)

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