Shining Through
Encyclopedia
Shining Through is a 1992 British-American World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 film drama, directed and written by David Seltzer
David Seltzer
David Seltzer is an American screenwriter, producer and director, perhaps best known for writing The Omen , and Bird on a Wire , starring Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn...

 and starring Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

 and Melanie Griffith
Melanie Griffith
Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...

, with Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson
Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...

, Joely Richardson
Joely Richardson
Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

 and John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

 in supporting roles. Although based on the novel of the same name by Susan Isaacs
Susan Isaacs
Susan Isaacs is an American novelist and screenwriter. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, educated at Queens College, and worked as a senior editor at Seventeen magazine. She married Elkan Abramowitz, a lawyer, in 1968 and in 1970 left work to stay at home with her newborn son, Andrew. Three...

, the film's plot is considerably different. The original music score was composed by Michael Kamen
Michael Kamen
Michael Arnold Kamen was an American composer , orchestral arranger, orchestral conductor, song writer, and session musician.-Background:...

. The film's tagline is: "He needed to trust her with his secret. She had to trust him with her life."

Plot summary

In 1940, Linda Voss (Melanie Griffith
Melanie Griffith
Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...

), a young woman of Irish
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

/German Jewish parentage, begins a new job as a secretary with a New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 law firm. Because she can speak German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 fluently, she becomes assistant/translator to Ed Leland (Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

), a humourless attorney. Linda graduially comes to suspect that Ed hides dark secrets. She is proved right when, after America officially joins forces with the Allies, he emerges as a colonel in the OSS
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...

. She accompanies him to confidential meetings in New York and Washington D.C., and before long, they become lovers. When he is suddenly posted away, she is left alone and devastated.

Assigned to work in the War Department, Linda hears nothing of Ed until he reappears as suddenly as he left. Reluctant to resume their affair, he does re-employ her. Ed and his colleagues abruptly need to replace a murdered agent in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 at very short notice. Despite knowing little about intelligence work — only what she's seen in movies — Linda volunteers and Ed allows himself to be persuaded by her fluent German and passion to contribute to the war effort. They travel to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, where Ed hands her over to master spy Konrad Friedrichs, codenamed "Sunflower" (John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

). Despite being appalled at her dialect ("the accent of a Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 butcher's wife!"), he installs Linda in the basement of his Berlin mansion and introduces her to his niece, Margrete von Eberstein (Joely Richardson
Joely Richardson
Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

), a beautiful socialite also working as an Allied agent.

Linda is planted as a cook in the household of a social-climbing Nazi, but her first dinner is a disaster and she is sacked on the spot. She is taken on as a nanny
Nanny
A nanny, childminder or child care provider, is an individual who provides care for one or more children in a family as a service...

 to the children of high-ranking Nazi officer Franz-Otto Dietrich (Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson
Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...

), who had been a guest at the dinner. Unable to report back to Ed, she is taken to Dietrich's house and effectively drops out of sight. Dietrich brings home confidential documents, so Linda starts searching for them - intending to photograph them. Contrary to orders, she also attempts to locate her cousins, believed to be hiding in Berlin. She tracks down her relatives hiding place but is too late. They have already been captured and the cellar is empty.

A bombing raid causes the Dietrich children to reveal a hidden room, where Linda photographs Dietrich's top-secret papers. Her cover is blown by Margrete's mother, who believes her to be a friend from university. In desperation, she seeks sanctuary with Margrete, only to find to her horror that she is a double agent who has betrayed Linda's cousins and has now also betrayed Linda. She shoots Linda, wounding her, but Linda overpowers Margrete and kills her.

Badly wounded, Linda is found and rescued by Ed, who has come to Berlin in the guise of a high-ranking German officer. Pretending to be mute, as he does not speak the language, Ed takes Linda to the railway station and they travel to the Swiss border. Linda is barely alive and his travel papers are out of date. Ed's bluff fails to sway the border guards, forcing him to shoot his way out. Still carrying Linda, he struggles towards the frontier border. The German sniper
Sniper
A sniper is a marksman who shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel. Snipers typically have specialized training and distinct high-precision rifles....

 guarding the border wounds him twice, but he manages to get himself and Linda onto Swiss soil before collapsing. The sniper is shot by his Swiss counterpart.

The film closes as it began, with a television interview of an elderly Linda. It is revealed that while Linda and Ed recovered from their injuries in a Swiss hospital, the microfilm
Microform
Microforms are any forms, either films or paper, containing microreproductions of documents for transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about one twenty-fifth of the original document size...

 of the secret German documents has been retrieved from a hiding place inside Linda's glove — a trick she learned from one of her favorite war movies. She waves to Ed, now her husband, and their two sons. Ed joins her on camera as the film ends.

Cast

  • Michael Douglas
    Michael Douglas
    Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

     as Ed Leland
  • Melanie Griffith
    Melanie Griffith
    Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...

     as Linda Voss
  • Liam Neeson
    Liam Neeson
    Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...

     as Franz-Otto Dietrich
  • Joely Richardson
    Joely Richardson
    Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

     as Margrete von Eberstein
  • John Gielgud
    John Gielgud
    Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

     as Sunflower
  • Francis Guinan
    Francis Guinan
    Francis V. Guinan, Jr. is an American film, television and stage actor who is perhaps best known for his role as Edgar Teller the patriarch in the short-lived NBC series Eerie, Indiana....

     as Andrew Berringer
  • Patrick Winczewski as Fishmonger
  • Anthony Walters as Dietrich's Son
  • Victoria Shalet
    Victoria Shalet
    Victoria Shalet is an English actress most famous for her role as Harmony in the award-winning CBBC adaptation of the Dick King-Smith book The Queen's Nose.- Career :...

     as Dietrich's Daughter
  • Sheila Allen
    Sheila Allen
    Sheila Allen is an American actress.Sheila Ann Mathews was born in New York City. She was married to producer Irwin Allen until his death in 1991. She appeared in several of her husband's TV series and movies through 1986....

     as Olga Leiner, Magrete's Mother
  • Stanley Beard as Linda's Father
  • Sylvia Syms
    Sylvia Syms
    Sylvia M. L. Syms OBE is a British actress. She is probably best known for her roles in the films Woman in a Dressing Gown , Ice-Cold in Alex , No Trees in the Street , Victim and The Tamarind Seed...

     as Linda's Mother
  • Ronald Nitschke as Horst Drescher
  • Hansi Jochmann as Hedda Drescher
  • Peter Flechtner as S.S. Officer at Fish Market
  • Alexander Hauff as S.S. Officer at Fish Market
  • Claus Plankers as S.S. Officer at Fish Market
  • Renate Cyll as Woman in Fish Market
  • Dana Gladstone as Street Agitator
  • Lorrine Vozoff as Personnel Director
  • Matheiu Carrière as Von Haefler
  • Deirdre Harrison as USO Singer
  • Wolf Kahler
    Wolf Kahler
    Wolf Kahler is a German actor.Born in Kiel, since 1975 he has appeared in many US and UK television and film productions. Due to his height - he is 6 feet 2 inches tall - sharp features, blond hair and blue eyes he is often cast in roles as Nazis or other unsympathetic German characters...

     as Border Commandant
  • Wolfe Morris
    Wolfe Morris
    Wolfe Morris was a British film and television actor.He played character roles on stage, television and in feature films from the 1950s until the 1990s. He made his film debut in Ill Met by Moonlight. His grandparents were from Kiev and escaped the Russian pogroms, arriving in London in about 1890....

     as Male Translator
  • William Hope
    William Hope
    Colonel William Hope VC was a Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces....

     as Kernohan
  • Nigel Whitmey
    Nigel Whitmey
    Nigel Whitmey is a British Canadian-born actor who was born in Alberta, Canada, who has appeared in TV series and films. He is also the husband of the actress Abigail Thaw, whom he met whilst training at RADA.-Early life:...

     as 1st G.I. in Canteen
  • Rob Freeman
    Rob Freeman
    Robert Andrew Freeman is the former guitarist, backing vocalist and primary songwriter for the pop punk/post-hardcore group Hidden in Plain View...

     as 2nd G.I. in Canteen
  • Lisa Orgolini as Girl in Canteen
  • Jay Benedict
    Jay Benedict
    Jay Benedict is an American actor, best known in the United Kingdom for his role as Captain John Kieffer in Foyle's War .He has lived and worked in Europe since the 1960s...

     as Wisecracker in War Room
  • Thomas Kretschmann
    Thomas Kretschmann
    Thomas Kretschmann is a German actor best known for playing Leutnant Hans Von Witzland in the 1993 film Stalingrad, Hauptmann Wilm Hosenfeld in The Pianist, Hermann Fegelein in Der Untergang, and Captain Englehorn in the 2005 remake of King Kong.-Early life:Kretschmann was born in Dessau, former...

     as Man at Zurich Station
  • Klaus Münster as Cab Driver
  • Markus Napier as S.S. Officer
  • Constanze Engelbrecht as Stafson Von Neest
  • Martin Hoppe as German Soldier
  • Fritz Eggert as German Soldier
  • Ludwig Haas
    Ludwig Haas
    Ludwig Haas is a German television actor from Eutin.-External links:*...

     as Hitler
  • Clement von Frankenstein as BBC Interviewer
  • Lorelei King
    Lorelei King
    Lorelei King is a United States-born actress who has been based in the United Kingdom since 1981. She has narrated audiobooks, acted in radio plays for BBC Radio 4 and appeared on television.- Early life :...

     as Leland's New Secretary
  • Hans Martin Stier as Truck Driver
  • Wolfgang Heger as Bus Conductor, Kinderstrasse
  • Michael Gempart
    Michael Gempart
    -External links:...

     as Man at Kinderstrasse
  • Hana Maria Pravda
    Hana Maria Pravda
    Hana Maria Pravda was a Czechoslovakian actress.-Personal life:Pravda trained in Leningrad in 1936 under Alexei Dikii. On her return to Prague she married her first husband, Alexander Munk who was a student activist...

     as Babysitter
  • Lutz Weillich as Train Station Guard
  • Wolfgang Müller
    Wolfgang Müller
    Wolfgang Müller is a German artist, musician and writer, based in Berlin, Germany and Reykjavík, Iceland.Müller is the founder of the Berlin based multi-media performance art group Die Tödliche Doris...

     as Bus Conductor
  • Markus Kissling as Swiss Border Guard
  • Anna Tzelniker as Cleaning Woman
  • Andrzej Borkowski as German Refugee
  • Simon De Deney as S.S. Man
  • Tusse Silberg as Woman Dinner Guest at Drescher's
  • Suzanne Roquette
    Suzanne Roquette
    Suzanne Roquette is an actress, who remains best known for her role as Tanya Alexander in the science fiction television series Space 1999....

     as Woman Dinner Guest at Drescher's
  • Janis Martin
    Janis Martin
    Janis Darlene Martin was an American rockabilly and country music singer. She was one of the few women working in the male-dominated rock and roll music field during the 1950s and one of country music's early female innovators...

     as Opera Singer

Reception

The film was neither a commercial nor a critical success. The infamous Razzie Awards, in fact, declared Shining Through the Worst Picture of 1992, with Melanie Griffith being voted Worst Actress and David Seltzer for Worst Director. It also received nominations for Michael Douglas as Worst Actor and for Seltzer in the category of Worst Screenplay.

Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

, "I know it's only a movie, and so perhaps I should be willing to suspend my disbelief, but Shining Through is such an insult to the intelligence that I wasn't able to do that. Here is a film in which scene after scene is so implausible that the movie kept pushing me outside and making me ask how the key scenes could possibly be taken seriously."

Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...

 wrote in the New York Times that the first three-quarters of Susan Isaacs' book "never made it to the screen," including Linda Voss's love affair and marriage to her New York law firm boss, John Berringer. "David Seltzer's film version of Shining Through manages to lose also the humor of Susan Isaacs' savvy novel. Even stranger than that is the film's insistence on jettisoning the most enjoyable parts of the story."

It was while working on this film that Melanie Griffith became aware, for the very first time in her life, that Germans had done bad things to Jews during World War II, and she was quite outraged about it. This earned her the nickname "Brainiac" which was used in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

-area print media for some time afterward.

Production

The production had intended to shoot in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, but just as locations were bring considered in the fall of 1989 the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

 fell, making it possible to shoot the film on location in East Germany. The majority of the film was shot in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and Potsdam
Potsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....

 starting in October 1990, just as Germany was being reunified. Studio work was done at the DEFA Studios
Babelsberg Studios
The Studio Babelsberg, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany, is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. Founded in 1912, it covers an area of about . Hundreds of films, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel were filmed there...

, the state film studios of East Germany.

Because all of Berlin's great train stations were destroyed in WWII, the production traveled some distance to Leipzig to shoot scenes in the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof
Leipzig Hauptbahnhof
is, at 83,460 m², Europe's largest railway station when measured by floor area. It has 24 platforms housed in six iron trainsheds; a multi-level concourse with towering stone arches; and a 293 metre-long facade...

 terminus, built in 1915 and the largest in Europe. This was prior to its massive modernization by the Deutsche Bahn.

The finale of the film, set at a border crossing and involving a period train, was shot in Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt
-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...

, Corinthia
Corinthia
Corinthia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Peloponnese. It is situated around the city of Corinth, in the north-eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula.-Geography:...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

.

The New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 and Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 scenes at the beginning of the film were shot in and around London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and at nearby Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...

. Locations included the Old Royal Naval College
Old Royal Naval College
The Old Royal Naval College is the architectural centrepiece of Maritime Greenwich, a World Heritage Site in Greenwich, London, described by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation as being of “outstanding universal value” and reckoned to be the “finest and most...

 in Greenwich, Hammersmith
Hammersmith
Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...

, and St Pancras Station, which doubled for Zurich Station for a brief sequence set in Switzerland.

External links

Shining Through is a 1992 British-American World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 film drama, directed and written by David Seltzer
David Seltzer
David Seltzer is an American screenwriter, producer and director, perhaps best known for writing The Omen , and Bird on a Wire , starring Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn...

 and starring Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

 and Melanie Griffith
Melanie Griffith
Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...

, with Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson
Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...

, Joely Richardson
Joely Richardson
Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

 and John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

 in supporting roles. Although based on the novel of the same name by Susan Isaacs
Susan Isaacs
Susan Isaacs is an American novelist and screenwriter. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, educated at Queens College, and worked as a senior editor at Seventeen magazine. She married Elkan Abramowitz, a lawyer, in 1968 and in 1970 left work to stay at home with her newborn son, Andrew. Three...

, the film's plot is considerably different. The original music score was composed by Michael Kamen
Michael Kamen
Michael Arnold Kamen was an American composer , orchestral arranger, orchestral conductor, song writer, and session musician.-Background:...

. The film's tagline is: "He needed to trust her with his secret. She had to trust him with her life."

Plot summary

In 1940, Linda Voss (Melanie Griffith
Melanie Griffith
Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...

), a young woman of Irish
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

/German Jewish parentage, begins a new job as a secretary with a New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 law firm. Because she can speak German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 fluently, she becomes assistant/translator to Ed Leland (Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

), a humourless attorney. Linda graduially comes to suspect that Ed hides dark secrets. She is proved right when, after America officially joins forces with the Allies, he emerges as a colonel in the OSS
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...

. She accompanies him to confidential meetings in New York and Washington D.C., and before long, they become lovers. When he is suddenly posted away, she is left alone and devastated.

Assigned to work in the War Department, Linda hears nothing of Ed until he reappears as suddenly as he left. Reluctant to resume their affair, he does re-employ her. Ed and his colleagues abruptly need to replace a murdered agent in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 at very short notice. Despite knowing little about intelligence work — only what she's seen in movies — Linda volunteers and Ed allows himself to be persuaded by her fluent German and passion to contribute to the war effort. They travel to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, where Ed hands her over to master spy Konrad Friedrichs, codenamed "Sunflower" (John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

). Despite being appalled at her dialect ("the accent of a Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 butcher's wife!"), he installs Linda in the basement of his Berlin mansion and introduces her to his niece, Margrete von Eberstein (Joely Richardson
Joely Richardson
Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

), a beautiful socialite also working as an Allied agent.

Linda is planted as a cook in the household of a social-climbing Nazi, but her first dinner is a disaster and she is sacked on the spot. She is taken on as a nanny
Nanny
A nanny, childminder or child care provider, is an individual who provides care for one or more children in a family as a service...

 to the children of high-ranking Nazi officer Franz-Otto Dietrich (Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson
Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...

), who had been a guest at the dinner. Unable to report back to Ed, she is taken to Dietrich's house and effectively drops out of sight. Dietrich brings home confidential documents, so Linda starts searching for them - intending to photograph them. Contrary to orders, she also attempts to locate her cousins, believed to be hiding in Berlin. She tracks down her relatives hiding place but is too late. They have already been captured and the cellar is empty.

A bombing raid causes the Dietrich children to reveal a hidden room, where Linda photographs Dietrich's top-secret papers. Her cover is blown by Margrete's mother, who believes her to be a friend from university. In desperation, she seeks sanctuary with Margrete, only to find to her horror that she is a double agent who has betrayed Linda's cousins and has now also betrayed Linda. She shoots Linda, wounding her, but Linda overpowers Margrete and kills her.

Badly wounded, Linda is found and rescued by Ed, who has come to Berlin in the guise of a high-ranking German officer. Pretending to be mute, as he does not speak the language, Ed takes Linda to the railway station and they travel to the Swiss border. Linda is barely alive and his travel papers are out of date. Ed's bluff fails to sway the border guards, forcing him to shoot his way out. Still carrying Linda, he struggles towards the frontier border. The German sniper
Sniper
A sniper is a marksman who shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel. Snipers typically have specialized training and distinct high-precision rifles....

 guarding the border wounds him twice, but he manages to get himself and Linda onto Swiss soil before collapsing. The sniper is shot by his Swiss counterpart.

The film closes as it began, with a television interview of an elderly Linda. It is revealed that while Linda and Ed recovered from their injuries in a Swiss hospital, the microfilm
Microform
Microforms are any forms, either films or paper, containing microreproductions of documents for transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about one twenty-fifth of the original document size...

 of the secret German documents has been retrieved from a hiding place inside Linda's glove — a trick she learned from one of her favorite war movies. She waves to Ed, now her husband, and their two sons. Ed joins her on camera as the film ends.

Cast

  • Michael Douglas
    Michael Douglas
    Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

     as Ed Leland
  • Melanie Griffith
    Melanie Griffith
    Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...

     as Linda Voss
  • Liam Neeson
    Liam Neeson
    Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...

     as Franz-Otto Dietrich
  • Joely Richardson
    Joely Richardson
    Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

     as Margrete von Eberstein
  • John Gielgud
    John Gielgud
    Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

     as Sunflower
  • Francis Guinan
    Francis Guinan
    Francis V. Guinan, Jr. is an American film, television and stage actor who is perhaps best known for his role as Edgar Teller the patriarch in the short-lived NBC series Eerie, Indiana....

     as Andrew Berringer
  • Patrick Winczewski as Fishmonger
  • Anthony Walters as Dietrich's Son
  • Victoria Shalet
    Victoria Shalet
    Victoria Shalet is an English actress most famous for her role as Harmony in the award-winning CBBC adaptation of the Dick King-Smith book The Queen's Nose.- Career :...

     as Dietrich's Daughter
  • Sheila Allen
    Sheila Allen
    Sheila Allen is an American actress.Sheila Ann Mathews was born in New York City. She was married to producer Irwin Allen until his death in 1991. She appeared in several of her husband's TV series and movies through 1986....

     as Olga Leiner, Magrete's Mother
  • Stanley Beard as Linda's Father
  • Sylvia Syms
    Sylvia Syms
    Sylvia M. L. Syms OBE is a British actress. She is probably best known for her roles in the films Woman in a Dressing Gown , Ice-Cold in Alex , No Trees in the Street , Victim and The Tamarind Seed...

     as Linda's Mother
  • Ronald Nitschke as Horst Drescher
  • Hansi Jochmann as Hedda Drescher
  • Peter Flechtner as S.S. Officer at Fish Market
  • Alexander Hauff as S.S. Officer at Fish Market
  • Claus Plankers as S.S. Officer at Fish Market
  • Renate Cyll as Woman in Fish Market
  • Dana Gladstone as Street Agitator
  • Lorrine Vozoff as Personnel Director
  • Matheiu Carrière as Von Haefler
  • Deirdre Harrison as USO Singer
  • Wolf Kahler
    Wolf Kahler
    Wolf Kahler is a German actor.Born in Kiel, since 1975 he has appeared in many US and UK television and film productions. Due to his height - he is 6 feet 2 inches tall - sharp features, blond hair and blue eyes he is often cast in roles as Nazis or other unsympathetic German characters...

     as Border Commandant
  • Wolfe Morris
    Wolfe Morris
    Wolfe Morris was a British film and television actor.He played character roles on stage, television and in feature films from the 1950s until the 1990s. He made his film debut in Ill Met by Moonlight. His grandparents were from Kiev and escaped the Russian pogroms, arriving in London in about 1890....

     as Male Translator
  • William Hope
    William Hope
    Colonel William Hope VC was a Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces....

     as Kernohan
  • Nigel Whitmey
    Nigel Whitmey
    Nigel Whitmey is a British Canadian-born actor who was born in Alberta, Canada, who has appeared in TV series and films. He is also the husband of the actress Abigail Thaw, whom he met whilst training at RADA.-Early life:...

     as 1st G.I. in Canteen
  • Rob Freeman
    Rob Freeman
    Robert Andrew Freeman is the former guitarist, backing vocalist and primary songwriter for the pop punk/post-hardcore group Hidden in Plain View...

     as 2nd G.I. in Canteen
  • Lisa Orgolini as Girl in Canteen
  • Jay Benedict
    Jay Benedict
    Jay Benedict is an American actor, best known in the United Kingdom for his role as Captain John Kieffer in Foyle's War .He has lived and worked in Europe since the 1960s...

     as Wisecracker in War Room
  • Thomas Kretschmann
    Thomas Kretschmann
    Thomas Kretschmann is a German actor best known for playing Leutnant Hans Von Witzland in the 1993 film Stalingrad, Hauptmann Wilm Hosenfeld in The Pianist, Hermann Fegelein in Der Untergang, and Captain Englehorn in the 2005 remake of King Kong.-Early life:Kretschmann was born in Dessau, former...

     as Man at Zurich Station
  • Klaus Münster as Cab Driver
  • Markus Napier as S.S. Officer
  • Constanze Engelbrecht as Stafson Von Neest
  • Martin Hoppe as German Soldier
  • Fritz Eggert as German Soldier
  • Ludwig Haas
    Ludwig Haas
    Ludwig Haas is a German television actor from Eutin.-External links:*...

     as Hitler
  • Clement von Frankenstein as BBC Interviewer
  • Lorelei King
    Lorelei King
    Lorelei King is a United States-born actress who has been based in the United Kingdom since 1981. She has narrated audiobooks, acted in radio plays for BBC Radio 4 and appeared on television.- Early life :...

     as Leland's New Secretary
  • Hans Martin Stier as Truck Driver
  • Wolfgang Heger as Bus Conductor, Kinderstrasse
  • Michael Gempart
    Michael Gempart
    -External links:...

     as Man at Kinderstrasse
  • Hana Maria Pravda
    Hana Maria Pravda
    Hana Maria Pravda was a Czechoslovakian actress.-Personal life:Pravda trained in Leningrad in 1936 under Alexei Dikii. On her return to Prague she married her first husband, Alexander Munk who was a student activist...

     as Babysitter
  • Lutz Weillich as Train Station Guard
  • Wolfgang Müller
    Wolfgang Müller
    Wolfgang Müller is a German artist, musician and writer, based in Berlin, Germany and Reykjavík, Iceland.Müller is the founder of the Berlin based multi-media performance art group Die Tödliche Doris...

     as Bus Conductor
  • Markus Kissling as Swiss Border Guard
  • Anna Tzelniker as Cleaning Woman
  • Andrzej Borkowski as German Refugee
  • Simon De Deney as S.S. Man
  • Tusse Silberg as Woman Dinner Guest at Drescher's
  • Suzanne Roquette
    Suzanne Roquette
    Suzanne Roquette is an actress, who remains best known for her role as Tanya Alexander in the science fiction television series Space 1999....

     as Woman Dinner Guest at Drescher's
  • Janis Martin
    Janis Martin
    Janis Darlene Martin was an American rockabilly and country music singer. She was one of the few women working in the male-dominated rock and roll music field during the 1950s and one of country music's early female innovators...

     as Opera Singer

Reception

The film was neither a commercial nor a critical success. The infamous Razzie Awards, in fact, declared Shining Through the Worst Picture of 1992, with Melanie Griffith being voted Worst Actress and David Seltzer for Worst Director. It also received nominations for Michael Douglas as Worst Actor and for Seltzer in the category of Worst Screenplay.

Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

, "I know it's only a movie, and so perhaps I should be willing to suspend my disbelief, but Shining Through is such an insult to the intelligence that I wasn't able to do that. Here is a film in which scene after scene is so implausible that the movie kept pushing me outside and making me ask how the key scenes could possibly be taken seriously."

Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...

 wrote in the New York Times that the first three-quarters of Susan Isaacs' book "never made it to the screen," including Linda Voss's love affair and marriage to her New York law firm boss, John Berringer. "David Seltzer's film version of Shining Through manages to lose also the humor of Susan Isaacs' savvy novel. Even stranger than that is the film's insistence on jettisoning the most enjoyable parts of the story."

It was while working on this film that Melanie Griffith became aware, for the very first time in her life, that Germans had done bad things to Jews during World War II, and she was quite outraged about it. This earned her the nickname "Brainiac" which was used in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

-area print media for some time afterward.

Production

The production had intended to shoot in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, but just as locations were bring considered in the fall of 1989 the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

 fell, making it possible to shoot the film on location in East Germany. The majority of the film was shot in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and Potsdam
Potsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....

 starting in October 1990, just as Germany was being reunified. Studio work was done at the DEFA Studios
Babelsberg Studios
The Studio Babelsberg, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany, is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. Founded in 1912, it covers an area of about . Hundreds of films, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel were filmed there...

, the state film studios of East Germany.

Because all of Berlin's great train stations were destroyed in WWII, the production traveled some distance to Leipzig to shoot scenes in the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof
Leipzig Hauptbahnhof
is, at 83,460 m², Europe's largest railway station when measured by floor area. It has 24 platforms housed in six iron trainsheds; a multi-level concourse with towering stone arches; and a 293 metre-long facade...

 terminus, built in 1915 and the largest in Europe. This was prior to its massive modernization by the Deutsche Bahn.

The finale of the film, set at a border crossing and involving a period train, was shot in Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt
-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...

, Corinthia
Corinthia
Corinthia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Peloponnese. It is situated around the city of Corinth, in the north-eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula.-Geography:...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

.

The New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 and Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 scenes at the beginning of the film were shot in and around London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and at nearby Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...

. Locations included the Old Royal Naval College
Old Royal Naval College
The Old Royal Naval College is the architectural centrepiece of Maritime Greenwich, a World Heritage Site in Greenwich, London, described by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation as being of “outstanding universal value” and reckoned to be the “finest and most...

 in Greenwich, Hammersmith
Hammersmith
Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...

, and St Pancras Station, which doubled for Zurich Station for a brief sequence set in Switzerland.

External links

Shining Through is a 1992 British-American World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 film drama, directed and written by David Seltzer
David Seltzer
David Seltzer is an American screenwriter, producer and director, perhaps best known for writing The Omen , and Bird on a Wire , starring Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn...

 and starring Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

 and Melanie Griffith
Melanie Griffith
Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...

, with Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson
Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...

, Joely Richardson
Joely Richardson
Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

 and John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

 in supporting roles. Although based on the novel of the same name by Susan Isaacs
Susan Isaacs
Susan Isaacs is an American novelist and screenwriter. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, educated at Queens College, and worked as a senior editor at Seventeen magazine. She married Elkan Abramowitz, a lawyer, in 1968 and in 1970 left work to stay at home with her newborn son, Andrew. Three...

, the film's plot is considerably different. The original music score was composed by Michael Kamen
Michael Kamen
Michael Arnold Kamen was an American composer , orchestral arranger, orchestral conductor, song writer, and session musician.-Background:...

. The film's tagline is: "He needed to trust her with his secret. She had to trust him with her life."

Plot summary

In 1940, Linda Voss (Melanie Griffith
Melanie Griffith
Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...

), a young woman of Irish
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

/German Jewish parentage, begins a new job as a secretary with a New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 law firm. Because she can speak German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 fluently, she becomes assistant/translator to Ed Leland (Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

), a humourless attorney. Linda graduially comes to suspect that Ed hides dark secrets. She is proved right when, after America officially joins forces with the Allies, he emerges as a colonel in the OSS
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...

. She accompanies him to confidential meetings in New York and Washington D.C., and before long, they become lovers. When he is suddenly posted away, she is left alone and devastated.

Assigned to work in the War Department, Linda hears nothing of Ed until he reappears as suddenly as he left. Reluctant to resume their affair, he does re-employ her. Ed and his colleagues abruptly need to replace a murdered agent in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 at very short notice. Despite knowing little about intelligence work — only what she's seen in movies — Linda volunteers and Ed allows himself to be persuaded by her fluent German and passion to contribute to the war effort. They travel to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, where Ed hands her over to master spy Konrad Friedrichs, codenamed "Sunflower" (John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

). Despite being appalled at her dialect ("the accent of a Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 butcher's wife!"), he installs Linda in the basement of his Berlin mansion and introduces her to his niece, Margrete von Eberstein (Joely Richardson
Joely Richardson
Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

), a beautiful socialite also working as an Allied agent.

Linda is planted as a cook in the household of a social-climbing Nazi, but her first dinner is a disaster and she is sacked on the spot. She is taken on as a nanny
Nanny
A nanny, childminder or child care provider, is an individual who provides care for one or more children in a family as a service...

 to the children of high-ranking Nazi officer Franz-Otto Dietrich (Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson
Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...

), who had been a guest at the dinner. Unable to report back to Ed, she is taken to Dietrich's house and effectively drops out of sight. Dietrich brings home confidential documents, so Linda starts searching for them - intending to photograph them. Contrary to orders, she also attempts to locate her cousins, believed to be hiding in Berlin. She tracks down her relatives hiding place but is too late. They have already been captured and the cellar is empty.

A bombing raid causes the Dietrich children to reveal a hidden room, where Linda photographs Dietrich's top-secret papers. Her cover is blown by Margrete's mother, who believes her to be a friend from university. In desperation, she seeks sanctuary with Margrete, only to find to her horror that she is a double agent who has betrayed Linda's cousins and has now also betrayed Linda. She shoots Linda, wounding her, but Linda overpowers Margrete and kills her.

Badly wounded, Linda is found and rescued by Ed, who has come to Berlin in the guise of a high-ranking German officer. Pretending to be mute, as he does not speak the language, Ed takes Linda to the railway station and they travel to the Swiss border. Linda is barely alive and his travel papers are out of date. Ed's bluff fails to sway the border guards, forcing him to shoot his way out. Still carrying Linda, he struggles towards the frontier border. The German sniper
Sniper
A sniper is a marksman who shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel. Snipers typically have specialized training and distinct high-precision rifles....

 guarding the border wounds him twice, but he manages to get himself and Linda onto Swiss soil before collapsing. The sniper is shot by his Swiss counterpart.

The film closes as it began, with a television interview of an elderly Linda. It is revealed that while Linda and Ed recovered from their injuries in a Swiss hospital, the microfilm
Microform
Microforms are any forms, either films or paper, containing microreproductions of documents for transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about one twenty-fifth of the original document size...

 of the secret German documents has been retrieved from a hiding place inside Linda's glove — a trick she learned from one of her favorite war movies. She waves to Ed, now her husband, and their two sons. Ed joins her on camera as the film ends.

Cast

  • Michael Douglas
    Michael Douglas
    Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

     as Ed Leland
  • Melanie Griffith
    Melanie Griffith
    Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...

     as Linda Voss
  • Liam Neeson
    Liam Neeson
    Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...

     as Franz-Otto Dietrich
  • Joely Richardson
    Joely Richardson
    Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

     as Margrete von Eberstein
  • John Gielgud
    John Gielgud
    Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

     as Sunflower
  • Francis Guinan
    Francis Guinan
    Francis V. Guinan, Jr. is an American film, television and stage actor who is perhaps best known for his role as Edgar Teller the patriarch in the short-lived NBC series Eerie, Indiana....

     as Andrew Berringer
  • Patrick Winczewski as Fishmonger
  • Anthony Walters as Dietrich's Son
  • Victoria Shalet
    Victoria Shalet
    Victoria Shalet is an English actress most famous for her role as Harmony in the award-winning CBBC adaptation of the Dick King-Smith book The Queen's Nose.- Career :...

     as Dietrich's Daughter
  • Sheila Allen
    Sheila Allen
    Sheila Allen is an American actress.Sheila Ann Mathews was born in New York City. She was married to producer Irwin Allen until his death in 1991. She appeared in several of her husband's TV series and movies through 1986....

     as Olga Leiner, Magrete's Mother
  • Stanley Beard as Linda's Father
  • Sylvia Syms
    Sylvia Syms
    Sylvia M. L. Syms OBE is a British actress. She is probably best known for her roles in the films Woman in a Dressing Gown , Ice-Cold in Alex , No Trees in the Street , Victim and The Tamarind Seed...

     as Linda's Mother
  • Ronald Nitschke as Horst Drescher
  • Hansi Jochmann as Hedda Drescher
  • Peter Flechtner as S.S. Officer at Fish Market
  • Alexander Hauff as S.S. Officer at Fish Market
  • Claus Plankers as S.S. Officer at Fish Market
  • Renate Cyll as Woman in Fish Market
  • Dana Gladstone as Street Agitator
  • Lorrine Vozoff as Personnel Director
  • Matheiu Carrière as Von Haefler
  • Deirdre Harrison as USO Singer
  • Wolf Kahler
    Wolf Kahler
    Wolf Kahler is a German actor.Born in Kiel, since 1975 he has appeared in many US and UK television and film productions. Due to his height - he is 6 feet 2 inches tall - sharp features, blond hair and blue eyes he is often cast in roles as Nazis or other unsympathetic German characters...

     as Border Commandant
  • Wolfe Morris
    Wolfe Morris
    Wolfe Morris was a British film and television actor.He played character roles on stage, television and in feature films from the 1950s until the 1990s. He made his film debut in Ill Met by Moonlight. His grandparents were from Kiev and escaped the Russian pogroms, arriving in London in about 1890....

     as Male Translator
  • William Hope
    William Hope
    Colonel William Hope VC was a Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces....

     as Kernohan
  • Nigel Whitmey
    Nigel Whitmey
    Nigel Whitmey is a British Canadian-born actor who was born in Alberta, Canada, who has appeared in TV series and films. He is also the husband of the actress Abigail Thaw, whom he met whilst training at RADA.-Early life:...

     as 1st G.I. in Canteen
  • Rob Freeman
    Rob Freeman
    Robert Andrew Freeman is the former guitarist, backing vocalist and primary songwriter for the pop punk/post-hardcore group Hidden in Plain View...

     as 2nd G.I. in Canteen
  • Lisa Orgolini as Girl in Canteen
  • Jay Benedict
    Jay Benedict
    Jay Benedict is an American actor, best known in the United Kingdom for his role as Captain John Kieffer in Foyle's War .He has lived and worked in Europe since the 1960s...

     as Wisecracker in War Room
  • Thomas Kretschmann
    Thomas Kretschmann
    Thomas Kretschmann is a German actor best known for playing Leutnant Hans Von Witzland in the 1993 film Stalingrad, Hauptmann Wilm Hosenfeld in The Pianist, Hermann Fegelein in Der Untergang, and Captain Englehorn in the 2005 remake of King Kong.-Early life:Kretschmann was born in Dessau, former...

     as Man at Zurich Station
  • Klaus Münster as Cab Driver
  • Markus Napier as S.S. Officer
  • Constanze Engelbrecht as Stafson Von Neest
  • Martin Hoppe as German Soldier
  • Fritz Eggert as German Soldier
  • Ludwig Haas
    Ludwig Haas
    Ludwig Haas is a German television actor from Eutin.-External links:*...

     as Hitler
  • Clement von Frankenstein as BBC Interviewer
  • Lorelei King
    Lorelei King
    Lorelei King is a United States-born actress who has been based in the United Kingdom since 1981. She has narrated audiobooks, acted in radio plays for BBC Radio 4 and appeared on television.- Early life :...

     as Leland's New Secretary
  • Hans Martin Stier as Truck Driver
  • Wolfgang Heger as Bus Conductor, Kinderstrasse
  • Michael Gempart
    Michael Gempart
    -External links:...

     as Man at Kinderstrasse
  • Hana Maria Pravda
    Hana Maria Pravda
    Hana Maria Pravda was a Czechoslovakian actress.-Personal life:Pravda trained in Leningrad in 1936 under Alexei Dikii. On her return to Prague she married her first husband, Alexander Munk who was a student activist...

     as Babysitter
  • Lutz Weillich as Train Station Guard
  • Wolfgang Müller
    Wolfgang Müller
    Wolfgang Müller is a German artist, musician and writer, based in Berlin, Germany and Reykjavík, Iceland.Müller is the founder of the Berlin based multi-media performance art group Die Tödliche Doris...

     as Bus Conductor
  • Markus Kissling as Swiss Border Guard
  • Anna Tzelniker as Cleaning Woman
  • Andrzej Borkowski as German Refugee
  • Simon De Deney as S.S. Man
  • Tusse Silberg as Woman Dinner Guest at Drescher's
  • Suzanne Roquette
    Suzanne Roquette
    Suzanne Roquette is an actress, who remains best known for her role as Tanya Alexander in the science fiction television series Space 1999....

     as Woman Dinner Guest at Drescher's
  • Janis Martin
    Janis Martin
    Janis Darlene Martin was an American rockabilly and country music singer. She was one of the few women working in the male-dominated rock and roll music field during the 1950s and one of country music's early female innovators...

     as Opera Singer

Reception

The film was neither a commercial nor a critical success. The infamous Razzie Awards, in fact, declared Shining Through the Worst Picture of 1992, with Melanie Griffith being voted Worst Actress and David Seltzer for Worst Director. It also received nominations for Michael Douglas as Worst Actor and for Seltzer in the category of Worst Screenplay.

Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

, "I know it's only a movie, and so perhaps I should be willing to suspend my disbelief, but Shining Through is such an insult to the intelligence that I wasn't able to do that. Here is a film in which scene after scene is so implausible that the movie kept pushing me outside and making me ask how the key scenes could possibly be taken seriously."

Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...

 wrote in the New York Times that the first three-quarters of Susan Isaacs' book "never made it to the screen," including Linda Voss's love affair and marriage to her New York law firm boss, John Berringer. "David Seltzer's film version of Shining Through manages to lose also the humor of Susan Isaacs' savvy novel. Even stranger than that is the film's insistence on jettisoning the most enjoyable parts of the story."

It was while working on this film that Melanie Griffith became aware, for the very first time in her life, that Germans had done bad things to Jews during World War II, and she was quite outraged about it. This earned her the nickname "Brainiac" which was used in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

-area print media for some time afterward.

Production

The production had intended to shoot in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, but just as locations were bring considered in the fall of 1989 the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

 fell, making it possible to shoot the film on location in East Germany. The majority of the film was shot in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and Potsdam
Potsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....

 starting in October 1990, just as Germany was being reunified. Studio work was done at the DEFA Studios
Babelsberg Studios
The Studio Babelsberg, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany, is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. Founded in 1912, it covers an area of about . Hundreds of films, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel were filmed there...

, the state film studios of East Germany.

Because all of Berlin's great train stations were destroyed in WWII, the production traveled some distance to Leipzig to shoot scenes in the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof
Leipzig Hauptbahnhof
is, at 83,460 m², Europe's largest railway station when measured by floor area. It has 24 platforms housed in six iron trainsheds; a multi-level concourse with towering stone arches; and a 293 metre-long facade...

 terminus, built in 1915 and the largest in Europe. This was prior to its massive modernization by the Deutsche Bahn.

The finale of the film, set at a border crossing and involving a period train, was shot in Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt
-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...

, Corinthia
Corinthia
Corinthia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Peloponnese. It is situated around the city of Corinth, in the north-eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula.-Geography:...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

.

The New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 and Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 scenes at the beginning of the film were shot in and around London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and at nearby Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...

. Locations included the Old Royal Naval College
Old Royal Naval College
The Old Royal Naval College is the architectural centrepiece of Maritime Greenwich, a World Heritage Site in Greenwich, London, described by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation as being of “outstanding universal value” and reckoned to be the “finest and most...

 in Greenwich, Hammersmith
Hammersmith
Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...

, and St Pancras Station, which doubled for Zurich Station for a brief sequence set in Switzerland.

External links

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