The Innocent

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 USA in 1995. Plot The film takes place in 1950s Berlin at the height of the Cold War and centres around the joint CIA/MI6 real-life Operation Gold: building a tunnel under the Russian sector of Berlin. Cast 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 Release and reception The movie spent 12 months in studio quarantine, and was released domestically in September 1995 without advance screenings for critics. 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."