Witness (1985) on Netflix
Amish widow Rachel Lapp brings her son Samuel to Philadelphia, where he witnesses a murder in the train station. Detective Captain John Book takes the case.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.3/10115,484 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
Outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Rachel Lapp raises her eight-year-old son Samuel in an Amish community, and the two have just buried her husband, Jacob. They ride a train to Philadelphia to see Rachel's sister. Samuel wanders alone into the men's room at 30th Street Station while they wait for their next train, and there he watches a man being killed. Detective Captain John Book and his partner, Sergeant Elton Carter, take charge of the investigation. Book tells Rachel that the victim, Detective Ian Zenovich, was an undercover police officer. Shown photographs and a lineup, Samuel is unable to say who the killer is.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Witness (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Viggo Mortensen was cast because Weir thought he had the right face for the part of an Amish man; it was his first film acting role, and he had to turn down another role as a soldier in Shakespeare in the Park's production of Henry V.
- Ford spent the weeks before filming with the homicide department of the Philadelphia Police Department, while McGillis moved in with an Amish widow and her seven children, learning how to milk cows and practicing their Pennsylvania German dialect.
- Local Amish communities largely refused to appear on camera or rent their farms for filming, so many of the film's Amish extras were actually Mennonites, and the working title "Called Home" was changed to Witness partway through shooting at Paramount marketing's request.
- Director Peter Weir passed on the project once because he was busy prepping The Mosquito Coast, and only became available to direct Witness, his first American film, after that project's financing collapsed.
- David Cronenberg was offered the role of director but declined, as he "could never be a fan of the Amish", while John Badham dismissed it as "just another cop movie".
- After the movie was completed, Pennsylvania governor Dick Thornburgh agreed not to promote Amish communities as future film sites, and no major film has been shot in Lancaster County since Witness.
- To film the scene in the corn silo, corn was actually dropped onto the actor, while a scuba diving regulator with a compressed air tank was hidden on the floor so that he would be able to breathe.
