The Innocent (1993 film)

The Innocent is a 1993 John Schlesinger film. The screenplay was written by Ian McEwan and based on his novel of the same name. The film, released in the USA in 1995, stars Anthony Hopkins, Isabella Rossellini, and Campbell Scott.

The movie spentmonths 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, Its 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 lowkey tale of espionage, with allies spying on each other and everybodys motives in doubt, becomes a tense and suspenseful love story with Hitchcockian overtones.Rita Kempley in the Washington Post, on the other hand, called the movie baffling. She continued, The acting proves as inconsistent as Schlesingers ability to build and release suspense. In full swagger, Hopkins seems to be doing Teddy Roosevelt in preparation for the title role in Nixon. Rossellini recalls her mother, Ingrid Bergman, in an airport farewell scene that echoes Casablanca. It doesnt detract from the actresss work, but it does invite negative comparisons. Talk about amounting to a hill of beans. ........

Source: Wikipedia