FAQ for
Witness (1985) More at IMDbPro »

he following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags are used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Witness can be found here.

No. The screenplay for Witness was co-written by American screenwriters and novelists Pamela Wallace, Earl W. Wallace, and William Kelley.

In the film, they are mostly speaking modern German. In real life, the Amish have their own German dialect, spoken only occasionally in the film, called Pennsylvania German, commonly known as Pennsylvania Dutch. "Dutch" does not refer to the modern Dutch language but is an English transliteration of the word "Deitsch" (how the Amish refer to their language) which is related to the modern German word "Deutsch", which refers to the German language.

Rachel [Kelly McGillis] and John [Harrison Ford] are dancing to (It's A) Wonderful World. It was written by songwriters Sam Cooke, Lou Adler, and Herb Alpert, and recorded by Sam Cooke in the late 1950s. However, it's not Sam Cooke you hear in Witness. That version was sung by Greg Chapman.

Because Detective McFee [Danny Glover] was involved in a drug ring and some missing drugs. In Linda Seger's book, Making A Good Script Great (1994), she reveals that a scene was cut from the movie where it was explained that the murdered cop worked for Internal Affairs and was undercover investigating the corrupt cops.