The Innocent - 1993 film review

I'd never heard of the 1993 film The Innocent before it turned up on Talking Pictures TV. When I discovered that it was a spy movie set during the Cold War and not only directed by John Schlesinger but with a screenplay written by Ian McEwan and based on his novel, I was definitely interested. And when I learned that the cast was headed by Anthony Hopkins and Isabella Rossellini, it became a must-watch.

I wasn't disappointed, either. The film isn't a masterpiece, and you could argue that the whole isn't as great as the sum of its individual parts. This is partly due to some curious casting decisions, but the fact that fine actors are involved means that they meet the challenges head on and, overall successfully. The script is something of a slow-burn, which is also perhaps a weakness. But again, by the time the end credits rolled, I felt McEwan had done a good job.

The setting is Berlin in the mid-50s and a British telecoms expert arrives in the city to help the Americans to spy on the Russians with the help of state-of-the-art equipment hidden in a tunnel beneath the Russian zone of the city. I spent a week in Berlin in the 70s, when the Cold War was still ongoing, and the film brought back some memories of that very atmospheric trip.

The British guy, Leonard, happens to be played by an American, Campbell Scott (son of the more renowned George C. Scott) and the tough American who tells him what to do is played by Wales' own Anthony Hopkins. Leonard involves himself with a glamorous German woman (played by an Italian, Isabella Rossellini), so it's certainly a multi-national enterprise. There's an extended quasi-Hitchcockian sequence involving suitcases with highly compromising contents that is quite memorable, though overall the mood is low-key. The Innocent is as much a character-led drama as it is a story about espionage (or, indeed, a murder mystery), but it's well worth watching.