| Witness | |
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Original poster |
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| Directed by | Peter Weir |
| Produced by | Edward S. Feldman |
| Screenplay by | Earl W. Wallace William Kelley |
| Story by | William Kelley Pamela Wallace Earl W. Wallace |
| Starring | Harrison Ford Kelly McGillis Jan Rubes Danny Glover Lukas Haas Viggo Mortensen |
| Music by | Maurice Jarre |
| Cinematography | John Seale |
| Editing by | Thom Noble |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | February 8, 1985 |
| Running time | 112 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $12,000,000 (estimated) |
| Box office | $68,706,993 (US) [1] |
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 murder in Philadelphia.
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. The film's script is a frequent model for budding screenwriters, often used to display clear structure.
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Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis), a young Amish widow, and her 8-year-old son Samuel (Lukas Haas) are traveling by train to visit Rachel's sister. At the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, Samuel inadvertently sees two men brutally murder a third. Captain John Book (Harrison Ford) is the policeman assigned to the case.
Samuel witnessed the murder, a slashing, in the restroom and escaped the killers' detection by hiding in a stall. Book and his partner, Sergeant Eldon Carter (Brent Jennings), question Samuel. He is unable to identify the perpetrator from mug shot photographs or an identity parade, but notices a newspaper cutting at the police station with a picture of highly regarded narcotics officer James McFee (Danny Glover) and recognizes him as the killer. Book remembers that McFee was previously responsible for a drug raid where evidence mysteriously disappeared from the police department.
Book confides his suspicions to his superior officer, Chief Paul Schaeffer (Josef Sommer), who advises Book to keep the case secret so they can work out how to move forward with it. As Book returns home, he is confronted by McFee in a parking garage and badly wounded in the ensuing gunfight before McFee escapes. Since only Schaeffer had been told, Book realizes Schaeffer must have warned McFee and is also corrupt.
Book calls Carter and orders him to remove the Lapp file from the records. Book then hides his Dodge and uses his sister's VW to return Rachel and Samuel to Lancaster County. After the Lapp's safe arrival in rural Pennsylvania, Book collapses from loss of blood in his vehicle in front of the Lapp farm.
Impressing upon them that hospitalization will allow the corrupt officers to find him, Book is gradually tended back to health by the Amish. As Book heals, he begins to develop feelings for Rachel. The Lapps' neighbor, Daniel Hochleitner (Alexander Godunov) had himself hoped to court her and this becomes a cause of friction. Later Rachel and John are caught dancing – a disrespect to the conservative Amish way of life. Rachel’s father-in-law, Eli, takes her aside and warns that if she continues she could be shunned (ostracized) by the community. Rachel, in turn, feels she has done nothing wrong.
The corrupt officers intensify their efforts to find Book, who is informed via a call from a payphone that Carter has been killed. While still in town, Hochleitner and the other Amish men are harassed by local punks. Breaking with the Amish tradition of nonviolence, Book retaliates. The fight gets noticed by the local townspeople and is reported to the police. The news reaches Schaeffer.
John subsequently comes upon Rachel as she bathes, and she stands naked without shame before him. The two realize they are in love, but because of the publicity the fight has gotten, Book knows he must leave. Upset, Rachel removes her bonnet, and she and John run to one another, embracing with a passionate kiss.
McFee, Schaeffer, and "Fergie" Ferguson (Angus MacInnes), the second killer at the train station, arrive at the Lapp farm with pump action shotguns. Book, unarmed and in the barn with Samuel, orders Samuel to run to the neighbors for safety. The trio split up and search for Book. John tricks Fergie into the corn silo and suffocates him under tons of corn. He retrieves Fergie's shotgun and kills McFee. A crazed Schaeffer then forces Rachel and Eli out of the house at gunpoint; Eli signs to Samuel (who returned unseen upon hearing gunfire) to ring the warning bell. Although Schaeffer briefly forces Book to surrender to him, the loud clanging summons all other Amish within earshot. With so many witnesses present it is clear to Schaeffer that he cannot escape, and he gives up.
As Schaeffer is taken by local police and Book prepares to leave, he shares a quiet moment with Samuel, then exchanges a silent, loving gaze with Rachel. Eli bids Book goodbye for his return to Philadelphia, saying "You be careful out among the English [i.e., non-Amish]", as he had said to Rachel at the beginning of the film, and showing Book that he now respects him like the people of his own faith. As Book drives away from the Lapp farm, he passes Hochleitner, presumably on his way to court Rachel, and exchanges an amicable wave of farewell.
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 (which is 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, 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. Then, as financial backing for The Mosquito Coast fell through, Weir became free to direct Witness, which was 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 city and 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 Pennsylvania Germans, 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 in particular, or Pennsylvania Germans in general.
Witness was generally well received by critics and earned eight Academy Award nominations (including Weir's first and Ford's sole nomination to date).
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."[3]
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."[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]
Although the movie did well at the box office, it was not well received by the Amish communities where it was filmed. A statement released by a law firm associated with the Amish claimed that the portrayal of the Amish in the movie was not accurate. The National Committee For Amish Religious Freedom called for a boycott of the movie soon after its release citing fears that these communities were being "overrun by tourists" as a result of the popularity of the movie, and worried that "the crowding, souvenir-hunting, photographing and trespassing on Amish farmsteads will increase". After the movie was completed, the governor of Pennsylvania at the time, Dick Thornburgh, agreed not to promote the Amish communities as future film sites.[9]
There were satirical references to Witness in a sixth season episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun.
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]
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.
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