Shining Through is a 1992 American World War II drama film written and directed by David Seltzer and based on the 1988 novel by Susan Isaacs. It stars Michael Douglas, Melanie Griffith, Liam Neeson, Joely Richardson and John Gielgud, and the original music score was composed by Michael Kamen. The film was released in the United States on January 31, 1992.
Contents
Plot
In 1992, Linda Voss is interviewed by a BBC documentary team about her experiences during World War II. Growing up in New York City as a woman of mixed Irish/German Jewish parentage, she dreamed of visiting family members in Berlin. In 1940, Linda is hired as a translator by Ed Leland, a humorless attorney whose strange behavior suggests he is a spy. They become lovers and after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ed is commissioned as a colonel in the OSS. Linda accompanies him to Washington D.C., and works in the War Department when he is posted overseas. He reappears with an attractive female officer and they resume their affair. When Albert Eckert, an undercover agent, is murdered in Berlin, the OSS recruit Linda volunteers to replace him and bring back data on the V-1 flying bomb.
Elderly master spy Konrad Friedrichs hides her in his house in Berlin and introduces her to his niece, Margrete von Eberstein, a socialite working as an Allied agent. Linda assumes the identity of Lina Albrecht, a household cook for Horst Drescher, a social-climbing Nazi officer. Drescher fires her when her cooking ruins a dinner party, but one of Drescher's guests, Franze-Otto Dietrich, takes her on as a nanny to his two children. She knows Dietrich is working on the project but proves unable to find intelligence on the V1 in the house.
