Review of Shining Through (1992) by Paul Z — 27 Jul 2009

Shining Through is a 1992 romantic thriller with a WWII espionage edge that attracts our ceaseless interest in that time in history. It tries even harder nevertheless to appeal to an even wider audience by adopting the tone and style of Mervyn LeRoy movies, that swift, superficially efficient gib shot festival approach and capricious indulgence in the flashback and dream sequence formats. Indeed, the movie is told in flashbacks, to no necessary end, with an aged, awkwardly demure Melanie Griffith recalling her story for a BBC interviewer. This would have worked better if Griffith had found a way to add mileage on her speaking voice, which stays in her common asthmatic, good-little-girl pattern. It was said in this film's era of release that with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Hollywood would have to double back to the Nazi generation for their villains. Thankfully, they cooked up some smarter Nazis for subsequent films. Maybe Susan Isaacs' initial material stands a better chance of preventing certain elements from straying too far into the clouds.

But since it is what it is, we have Michael Douglas, playing a Colonel in the OSS, covering as a lawyer. Purposeful, sophisticated. Melanie Griffith's character reacts to him as if he is humorless. Nonetheless, quiet or loud, he always seems powerful and determined. And Griffith, all things considered, empowers her character with a noble bearing.

The subject matter offers a great mine of fascination, intensity and entertainment, not to mention suspense. The Resistance during WWII had a profound effect on its partisans. There are many films, before this one and after, that more portray the sensory, tangled reality of the experience and less trivialize it in romanticized escapism. Nonetheless, can one fault a film for having been entertained by it?