Trailer
Plot summary
Billy Hughes cannot speak, though she hears, and she works in Moscow as the makeup and effects artist on a slasher picture. Her elder sister Karen, whose boyfriend Andy Clarke is directing it, is on the crew, and the two women talk by tapping a telephone receiver. One night Billy is locked inside the studio after everyone leaves. Looking for a mask she still has to fix, she finds men shooting a film on one of the sets; when the scene turns violent, she runs, and the men chase her through the corridors and an elevator shaft. Karen, Andy Clarke and the janitor find her outside, hurt, with Lyosha, one of the crew, standing over her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Mute Witness (1995)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Anthony Waller's screenplay was set in Chicago, but he was persuaded to shoot in Moscow for cheaper sets and labor; filming was delayed by a diphtheria outbreak and the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, and the production paid off customs officials and Russian mobsters to keep filming.
- Alec Guinness's cameo in the film was filmed nearly a decade before the rest of the movie; Anthony Waller met him in Hamburg in 1985 while both were working on a television commercial and asked him to do a one-scene cameo, which Guinness did for no payment.
- Alec Guinness took no payment and the appearance became one of his final screen roles; when Anthony Waller needed an additional scene, he used the same footage but reversed it.
- Gina Bellman was originally cast to play the lead role but dropped out at the last minute due to illness; Marina Zudina was brought in on short notice, and Anthony Waller directed her through an interpreter because she couldn't speak English and he couldn't speak Russian.
