Witness is a 1985 American thriller film directed by Peter Weir and starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis. The screenplay by William Kelley, Pamela Wallace, and Earl W. Wallace focuses on a detective protecting a young Amish boy who becomes the target of a ruthless killer after he witnesses a brutal murder in Philadelphia's 30th Street train station.
The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won two, for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. It was also nominated for seven BAFTA Awards, winning one for Maurice Jarre's score, and was also nominated for six Golden Globe Awards. William Kelley and Earl W. Wallace won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay and the 1986 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay presented by the Mystery Writers of America. The film is also notable as the screen debut of future star Viggo Mortensen.
Plot
Several days after her husband's funeral, Amish widow Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis) and her young son Samuel (Lukas Haas) depart for Baltimore to visit her sister. At the railway station in Philadelphia, the boy is the sole witness to the brutal murder of police officer Zenovich (Timothy Carhart) in the restroom. Samuel tells investigating detective John Book (Harrison Ford) there were two men involved in the crime but he could only see one, a strongly built African American man.
Book and his partner Elden Carter (Brent Jennings) take Samuel to the police station to identify possible suspects, where he identifies the man he notices in a displayed press photograph of Lieutenant James McFee (Danny Glover) as the murderer. Recalling a drug raid under McFee's command that led to suspicion of a police tipoff, Book goes to his mentor, Chief Paul Schaeffer (Josef Sommer), and advises him of Samuel's positive identification of McFee, unaware that Schaeffer ordered the murder. Shortly after, McFee engages Book in a gunfight and shoots him in the abdomen.
Deducing that Schaeffer told McFee and is therefore a corrupt cop himself, Book contacts Carter and tells him to destroy all records of the case in order to hide the location of Samuel's home. He sneaks Rachel and Samuel out of the city and drives them to their farm in rural Lancaster County. As he starts to leave the farm, Book passes out from loss of blood. Rachel's father-in-law Eli (Jan Rubes) reluctantly agrees to put up the "English" man (the Amish term for English-speaking outsiders) in their home, and arranges for an Amish apothecary to treat him, using traditional methods.
Adopting Amish dress to be more inconspicuous as he recovers, Book begins to fall in love with Rachel. Her father-in-law disapproves of their relationship and warns Rachel the community Elders are considering having her shunned. Book, an amateur carpenter, fits into the community fairly well, making toys for Samuel and helping in a barn raising. A local Amish man, Daniel Hochleitner (Alexander Godunov), wants to court Rachel, but senses her interest in Book.
After hearing Carter has been murdered, Book contacts Schaeffer and warns him he is coming for him. Later, when he sees some youths in town harassing Hochleitner and his family, Book severely beats them and, as the Amish are strict pacificists, word of this unusual occurrence spreads quickly. Book realizes his cover has been blown and prepares to leave the farm, sharing a passionate embrace with Rachel in farewell.
Schaeffer, McFee, and Fergie (Angus MacInnes), the second man involved in Zenovich's murder, arrive at the farm to kill Book. Unarmed, Book kills Fergie by smothering him with corn in a silo, then shoots McFee with Fergie's shotgun. Samuel rings the farm bell, alerting his neighbors to a problem, and they come running. Schaeffer, knowing he cannot kill all of them, surrenders.
Afterwards, as Book prepares to leave, he shares a quiet moment with Samuel, then exchanges a silent, loving gaze with Rachel. As he drives away from the Lapp farm, he encounters Hochleitner walking up the road, presumably to resume his courtship of Rachel.
Production
Producer Edward S. Feldman, who was in a first-look development deal with 20th Century Fox at the time, first received the screenplay for Witness in 1983. Originally entitled Called Home, the Amish term for death, it ran 182 pages long, the equivalent of three hours of screen time. The script, which had been circulating in Hollywood for several years, had been inspired by an episode of Gunsmoke William Kelley and Earl W. Wallace had written in the 1970s.[2]
Feldman liked the concept but felt too much of the script was devoted to Amish traditions, diluting the thriller aspects of the story. He offered Kelley and Wallace $25,000 for a one-year option and one rewrite, and an additional $225,000 if the film actually was made. They submitted the revised screenplay in less than six weeks, and Feldman delivered it to Fox. Joe Wizan, the studio's head of production, rejected it with the statement that Fox didn't make "rural movies".[2]
Feldman sent the screenplay to Harrison Ford's agent Phil Gersh, who contacted the producer four days later and advised him his client was willing to commit to the film. Certain the attachment of a major star would change Wizan's mind, Feldman approached him once again, but Wizan insisted that as much as the studio liked Ford, who had made Fox a fortune with the Star Wars franchise, they still weren't interested in making a "rural movie."[2]
Feldman sent the screenplay to numerous studios and was rejected by all of them, until Paramount Pictures finally expressed interest. Feldman's first choice of director was Peter Weir, but he was involved in pre-production work for The Mosquito Coast and passed on the project. John Badham dismissed it as "just another cop movie," and others Feldman approached either were committed to other projects or had no interest in his. Then The Mosquito Coast went into turnaround, freeing Weir to direct Witness, his first American film. It was imperative filming start immediately, because a Directors Guild of America strike was looming on the horizon.[2]
The film was shot on location in Philadelphia and the towns of Intercourse, Lancaster, Strasburg and Parkesburg. Local Amish were willing to work as carpenters and electricians but declined to appear on film, so many of the extras actually were Mennonites. Halfway through filming, the title was changed from Called Home to Witness at the behest of Paramount's marketing department, which felt the original title posed too much of a promotional challenge. Principal photography was completed three days before the scheduled DGA strike, which ultimately failed to materialize.[2]
There are a few times the dialect of the Amish, Pennsylvania German, popularly known as Pennsylvania Dutch, is heard in the film. In one scene, during construction of the new barn, a man says to John Book, "Du huschd hott gschofft. Sell waar guud!," which means "You worked hard. That was good!" But more often the Amish characters are heard speaking High German, the standard language of most German-speaking Europeans, which actually is used rarely by the Amish people.
Cast
Critical reception
Vincent Canby of the New York Times said of the film, "It's not really awful, but it's not much fun. It's pretty to look at and it contains a number of good performances, but there is something exhausting about its neat balancing of opposing manners and values… One might be made to care about all this if the direction by the talented Australian film maker, Peter Weir… were less perfunctory and if the screenplay… did not seem so strangely familiar. One follows Witness as if touring one's old hometown, guided by an outsider who refuses to believe that one knows the territory better than he does. There's not a character, an event or a plot twist that one hasn't anticipated long before its arrival, which gives one the feeling of waiting around for people who are always late."[3]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film four out of four stars, calling it "first of all, an electrifying and poignant love story. Then it is a movie about the choices we make in life and the choices that other people make for us. Only then is it a thriller—one that Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud to make." He concluded, "We have lately been getting so many pallid, bloodless little movies—mostly recycled teenage exploitation films made by ambitious young stylists without a thought in their heads—that Witness arrives like a fresh new day. It is a movie about adults, whose lives have dignity and whose choices matter to them. And it is also one hell of a thriller."[4]
Variety said the film was "at times a gentle, affecting story of star-crossed lovers limited within the fascinating Amish community. Too often, however, this fragile romance is crushed by a thoroughly absurd shoot-em-up, like ketchup poured over a delicate Pennsylvania Dutch dinner."[5]
Time Out New York observed, "Powerful, assured, full of beautiful imagery and thankfully devoid of easy moralising, it also offers a performance of surprising skill and sensitivity from Ford."[6]
Radio Times called the film "partly a love story and partly a thriller, but mainly a study of cultural collision — it's as if the world of Dirty Harry had suddenly stumbled into a canvas by Brueghel." It added, "[I]t's Weir's delicacy of touch that impresses the most. He ably juggles the various elements of the story and makes the violence seem even more shocking when it's played out on the fields of Amish denial."[7]
The film was screened out of competition at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.[8]
Box office
The film opened in 876 theaters in the US on February 8, 1985 and grossed $4,539,990 in its opening weekend, ranking #2 behind Beverly Hills Cop. It remained at #2 for the next three weeks and finally topped the charts in its fifth week of release. It eventually earned $68,706,993 in the US.[1]
Awards and nominations
- Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (winner)
- Academy Award for Best Film Editing (winner)
- Academy Award for Best Picture (nominee)
- Academy Award for Best Director (nominee)
- Academy Award for Best Actor (Harrison Ford, nominee)
- Academy Award for Best Art Direction (Stan Jolley and John H. Anderson, nominees)
- Academy Award for Best Cinematography (John Seale, nominee)
- Academy Award for Best Original Score (Maurice Jarre, nominee)
- BAFTA Award for Best Film (nominee)
- BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay (nominee)
- BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Harrison Ford, nominee)
- BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Kelly McGillis, nominee)
- BAFTA Award for Best Film Music (Maurice Jarre, winner)
- BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography (John Seale, nominee)
- BAFTA Award for Best Editing (nominee)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama (nominee)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Director (nominee)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay (nominee)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama (Harrison Ford, nominee)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (Kelly McGillis, nominee)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score (Maurice Jarre, nominee)
- Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film (winner)
- Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor (Harrison Ford, winner)
- Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay (winner)
- Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing - Feature Film (nominee)
- Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media (nominee)
- American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Feature Film (winner)
- Australian Cinematographers Society Award for Cinematographer of the Year (winner)
- British Society of Cinematographers Award for Best Cinematography (nominee)
DVD releases
The film was released on Region 1 DVD on June 29, 1999. It is in anamorphic widescreen format with audio tracks in English and French. The sole bonus feature is an interview with director Peter Weir.
The film was released on Region 2 DVD on October 2, 2000. It is in anamorphic widescreen format with audio tracks in English, French, German, Italian, Czech, Spanish, and Polish and subtitles in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, Danish, Hungarian, Dutch, Finnish, and Croatian. Bonus features include an interview with Weir and the original trailer.
A Special Collector's Edition was released on Region 1 DVD on August 23, 2005. It is in anamorphic widescreen format with audio tracks in English and French and subtitles in English and Spanish. Bonus features include the five-part documentary Between Two Worlds: The Making of Witness, a deleted scene, the original theatrical trailer, and three television ads. The Special Collector's Edition was released on Region 2 DVD on 19 February 2007, with different cover art and more extensive language and audio/subtitle options for European countries.
References
External links
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