Shining Through

In 1940, before the United States has entered the war, Linda Voss (Melanie Griffith), a young woman of Irish/German Jewish parentage living in Queens, New York, begins a new job as a secretary with a New York law firm. Because of her German language skills, she becomes a bilingual assistant and translator to Ed Leland (Michael Douglas), a humourless attorney at law.Linda increasingly suspects that Ed's activity is more than standard legal work. She is proved right when, after America officially joins forces with the Allies, he emerges as an officer in the OSS with the rank of colonel. She accompanies him to confidential meetings in New York and Washington, D.C., and before long, they also become lovers. But when he is suddenly posted away — probably on a mission to occupied Europe, she is left alone and devastated.Assigned to work in the War Department, Linda sees or hears nothing of Ed until he reappears as suddenly as he left. Reluctant to resume their affair, he does re-employ her. Ed and his colleagues abruptly need to replace a murdered agent in Berlin at very short notice. Despite knowing little about intelligence work — only what she's seen in movies — Linda volunteers and Ed allows himself to be persuaded.They travel together to Switzerland, where she is handed over to master spy Konrad Friedrichs, codenamed "Sunflower" (John Gielgud). Despite being appalled at her dialect ("the accent of a Berlin butcher's wife!"), he installs Linda in a cheap Berlin apartment and introduces her to Margrete von Eberstein (Joely Richardson), a beautiful and socially well-connected woman also working as an Allied agent.Linda is planted as a cook into the household of a social-climbing Nazi, but her first dinner is a disaster and she is sacked on the spot. She is taken on as a nanny to the children of high-ranking Nazi officer Franz-Otto Dietrich (Liam Neeson), who had been a guest at the dinner. Unable to report back to Ed, she is taken to Dietrich's house and effectively drops out of sight.Dietrich is in the habit of bringing home confidential documents, so Linda sets about searching the house so that she can find and photograph them. Contrary to orders, she also attempts to locate some Jewish cousins, believed to be hiding in a cellar in a Berlin suburb. She soon discovers that they have been arrested.A bombing raid causes the Dietrich children to reveal a hidden room, where Linda photographs Dietrich's top-secret papers. Her cover is blown by Margrete's mother, who believes her to be a friend from university. In desperation, she seeks sanctuary with Margrete, only to find to her horror that she is a double agent who has betrayed Linda's cousins and has now also betrayed Linda. She shoots Linda, wounding her, but Linda is nevertheless able to overpower Margrete and kill her.Badly wounded, she is found and rescued by Ed, who has come to Berlin in the guise of a high-ranking German officer. Pretending to be mute, as he does not speak the language, Ed takes Linda to the railway station and they travel to the Swiss border. Linda is barely alive and his travel papers are out of date. Ed's bluff fails to sway the border guards, forcing him to shoot his way out. He struggles towards the frontier border, badly wounded by enemy fire.The film closes as it began, with a television interview of an elderly Linda. It is revealed that while Linda and Ed recovered from their injuries in a Swiss hospital, the microfilm of the secret German documents has been retrieved from a hiding place inside Linda's glove — a trick she learned from one of her favourite war movies.