Eyewitness [The Janitor] **** (1981, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Plummer) – Classic Movie Review 6500

Producer-director Peter Yates’s first-class 1981 thriller is extremely moody, atmospheric, neat and tense throughout. The screenplay is convincingly written by Steve Tesich.

The young William Hurt is at his best as the Vietnam War vet and Manhattan janitor Daryll Deever who makes his beloved television news personality/ commentator Tony Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver) believe that he knows all about the rich, shady Vietnamese jeweller he finds murdered in the building where he works.

Unfortunately for Daryll Deever, and luckily for the plot, this brings the killers after him, thinking he knows something. Christopher Plummer plays Weaver’s mysterious boyfriend Joseph.

The accent is on mood, atmosphere and character development, but Yates does not neglect the thrills, particularly in the climactic fight among the horses in a stable, filmed at the Claremont stables, close to Central Park.

Also in the fine cast are Irene Worth, James Woods, Kenneth McMillan, Steven Hill, Pamela Reed, Albert Paulsen, Alice Drummond and Morgan Freeman.

It is shot by Matthew F Leonetti, scored by Stanley Silverman and designed by Philip Rosenberg.

Despite all the good work, it was not much of a hit. Costing $8,500,000, it took only $6,400,000 in the US.

It is a film with a title problem. In the UK it was called The Janitor, the movie’s original release title. After the film’s poor box-office, the title was changed to Eyewitness for further cinema releases. Yates and Tesich liked the shooting title of The Janitor Can’t Dance but 20th Century Fox vetoed it. Yates never liked the title Eyewitness.

Writer Steve Tesich was once an office-building janitor. Weaver’s character is based on a Washington D C anchorwoman Tesich had an infatuation with.

Hurt moonlighted as a janitor to research his character.

The basement where Deever works is shot on a set designed by Rosenberg and built at Kaufman Astoria Studios in New York City.

The TV station in the film is the real-life WNEW-TV, and many of its staff make cameo appearances.

Yates and Tesich had just collaborated on Breaking Away (1979) and they went on to make Eleni (1985) together.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6500

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