He needed to trust her with his secret. She had to trust him with her life.


Shining Through is a 1992 American World War II drama film written and directed by David Seltzer and starring Michael Douglas and Melanie Griffith, with Liam Neeson, Joely Richardson and John Gielgud in supporting roles. It is based on the novel of the same name by Susan Isaacs. The original music score was composed by Michael Kamen. The film's tagline is: "He needed to trust her with his secret. She had to trust him with her life."

The film was neither a commercial nor a critical success. The Razzie Awards declared Shining Through the Worst Picture of 1992, with Melanie Griffith being voted Worst Actress (also for her performance in A Stranger Among Us) and David Seltzer for Worst Director. It also received nominations for Michael Douglas as Worst Actor (also for Basic Instinct) and for Seltzer in the category of Worst Screenplay.[2] The film holds a 36% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, "I know it's only a movie, and so perhaps I should be willing to suspend my disbelief, but Shining Through is such an insult to the intelligence that I wasn't able to do that. Here is a film in which scene after scene is so implausible that the movie kept pushing me outside and making me ask how the key scenes could possibly be taken seriously."[3]

Janet Maslin wrote in the New York Times that the first three-quarters of Susan Isaacs' book "never made it to the screen," including Linda Voss's love affair and marriage to her New York law firm boss, John Berringer. "David Seltzer's film version of Shining Through manages to lose also the humor of Susan Isaacs' savvy novel. Even stranger than that is the film's insistence on jettisoning the most enjoyable parts of the story."[4]

The film is listed in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book The Official Razzie Movie Guide as one of the The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made.

Release Date: January 31 1992 by 20th Century Fox

Box office: $21,633,781 2016: $45,144,200

NOTE: Box lists running time of 113 minutes. Tape has 133 minutes