Shining Through (1992)

Director: David Seltzer

Starring: Melanie Griffith, Michael Douglas, Liam Neeson

Release date: January 31 (US). This replaces the unavailable Hurricane Smith. Am I missing anything there? I’m only asking because this Shining Through bollocks is unbelievable. May contain Berlin-quality strudel and spoilers…

Kee-rist… Right. Linda Voss (Melanie Griffith) is a half-Irish, half Jewish firebrand from Queens who takes a job as a personal assistant to secretive government type Ed Leland (Michael Douglas). What she really wants though is to get into the war effort, principally to find relatives trapped in Germany and y’know, maybe do a bit of spying into the bargain…

Okay, the film ended 5 minutes ago. I honestly have no idea how to approach this write-up. I don’t know exactly what it is I’ve just watched. What was it the legendary Nigel Tufnel said? “It’s a fine line between clever and stupid.” What if there’s no line and no clever? There may be a reason for the imbecility on display, the director may have had a plan and I’m going to try and get my head around it in a minute. But first…

Shades of ‘Casablanca’… you wish, Seltzer…

I’m gonna begin by saying that Shining Through proved jaw-dropping on more than one occasion, the first of which centred on Linda determined to do her bit for her country, which is fair enough. But, she wants to be a spy because she can speak fluent German (taught by her German-Jew father). Faintly ludicrous but I let it go because I thought from there we would be treated to a short ‘spy training’ montage. I have to tell you now; no such training montage took place. Ed quite rightly refuses her request because there’s a lot more to spying than being able to speak German and as shall be revealed, he should know. This next bit is ginormously hysterical – I still can’t believe somebody committed it to film. Not to be deterred, right, Linda rocks up on Ed’s door step in the middle of the night with a plate of strudel. She insists he try some and on the basis of this and this alone Linda believes the superiority of her delicious strudel – “Just the way they make it in Berlin” – qualifies her as the perfect spy. Ed finds it impossible to disagree.

Gielgud tries to escape from the movie on a train

If you haven’t seen Shining Through I haven’t spoofed the scene in any way. “Try my strudel, Ed!” It’s like that Monty Python sketch:

“Why do you want to join the Secret Service? Can you keep a secret?”

“Yes.”

“Right, well you’re in then!”

Believe it or not, I was actually with the film until the strudel, thereabouts anyway. From then on, I realised something was very wrong with Shining Through. Eventually, it becomes apparent that Ed is not a high-flying attorney or whatever but does in fact work for the OSS (Office of Strategic Strudel); he’s a spy who spends months of deep cover inside Germany. Consider Ed can’t speak a word of German, highly reckless for an operative trying to blend in as a Jerry officer. Ironic then that he refused Linda because she could speak German. So, if he can prance around behind enemy lines with a fake bandage around his neck, communicating with bits of paper pre-written in German then it’s hardly surprising Linda can get in with a plate of strudel.

“Burr-lynn… Boo-er-lee-in… Hi, eye-ma spy, goddenny intel fer me?”

Okay, I’ve got that out of the way, that was difficult to write… and I’ve also got the stupefyingly, uproariously hilarious finale on replay in my head. See, I cannot comprehend as a director you would record this stuff to celluloid and believe it works as a serious drama. I have, in the last few minutes and having given it some thought, come up with an alternative theory which is maybe what David Seltzer was going after, the directorial plan I was alluding to at the beginning. I’m probably wrong but I’ll give it a go… Linda – and this I quite liked – loves war movies. In fact war movies are her spy training in a way. Ridiculous but sweet and it makes for some nice if naive exchanges with Ed. Now, this might already be common knowledge, I don’t know, but I think Seltzer has fashioned the film in the manner of Linda’s cinematic experiences; that is, Shining Through is deliberately melodramatic and rammed with the kind of contrivances we all love to pick on but they get away with because it’s only a movie. Dig? It’s all playing out like one of Linda’s favourite war films. I hope this theory is correct. If not, Shining Through is a great big porcelain cracking turd.

Jan De Bont shoots the film rather nicely…

It’s such a slight experience – and this runs at 127 minutes – it’s a case of watching Linda crash through one blunder after another and land on her feet until an unlikely act of bravery during a life and death struggle. She’s a disaster area, almost blowing her cover on several occasions. Notably, whenever she sets foot in the fish shop, the mere act of crossing the threshold turns her into a gibbering wreck – again, it’s like a Fast Show sketch. On the first occasion a German officer asks to see her papers and she is clearly coming apart faster than the Euro-zone to the point she accidentally activates the fake compartment in her case in full view. Obviously, given the kind of film I believe this is, the officer merely favours her with a suspicious glare for what seems like 20 minutes before departing and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Technically, it’s a touch of genius because Jerry would never believe such a spectacular idiot would be employed as an Allied spy.

You must also consider that her contact – Margrete, not Sunflower (a simmeringly ticked off John Gielgud) – quite obviously sets up this cretin with a job in a high-ranking German’s kitchen, safe in the knowledge that Linda is glaringly not what she’s billed as and will promptly be arrested and interrogated. She serves cold soup hot and follows that with raw pigeon. She isn’t arrested as a fraud but only sacked. If only she’d done a strudel; she’d have been awarded the Iron feckin Cross. Another German officer, Dietrich (Liam Neeson) is so impressed by Linda’s extraordinary ineptness he gives her a job as a nanny to his kids. A nanny to his kids! He may as well hire Coco the feckin clown! Dietrich doesn’t suspect her as a spy, he actually thinks she might be Gestapo checking up on his loyalty to the Fatherland. Linda then proceeds to drag these poor kids around Berlin with her while she searches for her Jewish relatives known to be hiding somewhere in the city (the fact that the kids might tell their father what they’ve been doing all day seems to have escaped her). We get treated to more fish shop slapstick and the heartbreaking sight of her contact there desperately trying to explain his hard won information to her stupid nonplussed face. You may as well try to explain trigonometry to a tulip, mate…

This kind of imagery deserves a better film…

The one real moment in this honker is the night club scene. Leland, after being out in the field for some months, returns with another girl on his arm. Seltzer allows Griffith time to find her performance, to draw out the emotional upset naturally when she and Leland eventually dance together. Corny but it works, just about. Generally, Griffith does her woman-child thing again, I kind of expected something else given the material. The luminous Joely Richardson plays Margrete who, at the behest of Sunflower, gives Linda a crash course in German etiquette. It’s quite clever in the bookending ‘old Linda’ segments to see Linda become tearful at the mention of Margrete by the BBC interviewer. You’re given an impression that is entirely wrong.

“Vot’s a fraulein like you do-ink in a place like ziss?” – “Spyin, bro!”

The finale to the action has to be seen to be believed. I was on the floor, screaming. I have to talk about it, have to, so avoid this paragraph right now if you don’t wish to know any more. You see, Leland, with Sunflower’s aid, discovers the possibly mortally wounded Linda and manages to smuggle her to the Swiss border. Bear in mind he can’t speak a syllable of Kraut, he needs Linda for that and she’s unconscious. Not happening, is it. There’s a big shoot-out, the result of which is the plainly wondrous sight of a shot-to-shit Leland staggering under the weight of wounded Linda and bearing down on the Swiss border which is conveniently marked with a bold white line and a camera angle straight out of televised Olympic track event coverage on a photo-finish. All of this while Leland’s mates watch helplessly a few feet away in Switzerland. Leland teeters precariously wrong side of the finish line, touch and go for a second but then he collapses over it with Linda. The Germans instantly give up! It’s like, ‘yeh, we’re not taking on the Swiss. We’ve invaded everyone else but we’re not tangling with a few border guards. They might throw Toblerone at us…’ Bollocks. The Nazis would pump a few more rounds into Leland and Linda and stand there going, ‘So? What are you gonna do about it?’ Words can’t describe how funny this sequence is.

There remains an unlikely coda but I’m not going on about Shining Through anymore. It’s a very silly film. Good for a few unintentional laughs but as a drama, woeful.

 

Trailer: http://tinyurl.com/cv4m9au

Merson melt-down as City triumph: http://tinyurl.com/cdaofmm

It’s only having 1 Secret Microfilm out of 5.

Cheers, folk.

ThereWolf, May 2012

 

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