Marathon Man is a 1976 thriller film based on the novel of the same name by William Goldman. The film was directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman as the protagonist, Thomas "Babe" Levy, Roy Scheider as his brother, an undercover agent, and Laurence Olivier as Nazi dentist and war criminal, Dr. Christian Szell. The original music score was composed by Michael Small.
A financial and critical success, Olivier's performance in Marathon Man was particularly praised: he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and he won a Golden Globe in the same category.
Dr. Szell was ranked as villain #34 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains" list. The film itself was ranked #50 on the "100 Years...100 Thrills" list. Both the novel and the film contain a graphic depiction in which Szell tortures Babe by drilling into his teeth, without anesthetic, while repeatedly asking the question, "Is it safe?" The quote "Is it safe?" was ranked #70 on the "100 Years...100 Movie Quotes" list.
Marathon Man was not the first feature film production to use the Steadicam (the distinction going to Bound for Glory). However, it was the first feature using Steadicam that saw theatrical release, predating the premieres of both Bound for Glory and Rocky.
Plot summary
Thomas Levy (Dustin Hoffman), nicknamed "Babe" in the film, is a history Ph.D. candidate researching the same field as his father, who committed suicide after being investigated during the Joseph McCarthy era. Babe is also an avid runner, which lends the film its title. Babe's brother, Henry (Roy Scheider), better known as "Doc", poses as an oil company executive, but in fact is a U.S. government agent working for an agency headed up by Director Peter Janeway (William Devane). Babe is not aware of his brother's true occupation.
Doc is often supposedly out of the country on business for extended periods of time but comes to New York under the guise of a visit to Thomas. The brother of a Nazi war criminal possesses a safety deposit box key, but is killed in a traffic accident (after a seemingly humorous road rage altercation with an short tempered middle-aged Jewish American motorist). Doc suspects that the criminal, Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) will be arriving to retrieve an extremely valuable diamond collection.
Babe enters into a relationship with a young woman named Elsa Opel, who claims to be from Switzerland. One night while out on a date Elsa and Babe are seemingly mugged in a park by two men dressed in suits. Some time later, Doc takes the couple to lunch, where he tricks Elsa into revealing that she has been lying to Babe about her background. Though Doc suspects she may have some connection to Szell, he tells Babe only that she is simply seeking an American husband so that she can become a U.S. citizen.
After Szell arrives in America, Doc meets him to tell the former Nazi he is not welcome in the country. Szell casually accepts the pronouncement, but then swiftly knifes the spy, wounding him severely. Doc is able to make it back to his brother's apartment, but collapses and dies in Babe's arms without telling him anything. The police interrogate Babe for hours, until government agents led by Peter Janeway arrive. Babe is highly uncooperative with Janeway, who is trying to find out what Doc told Babe before he died. Janeway informs Babe of his brother's career as a U.S. government agent. Babe insists that his brother did not tell him anything, but Janeway feels that Doc struggled all the way to Babe's apartment to give him vital information of some kind.
Babe is later abducted from his apartment by Szell's subordinates, Karl and Erhardt (the two men from the park). In an infamous sequence, Babe is tortured by Szell, a skilled dentist, who repeatedly asks "Is it safe?" Confused by the question—a code phrase he does not understand—Babe denies any knowledge, but is tortured. The dentist offers him oil of cloves, an anesthetic, as positive inducement to cooperate. Eventually, Babe loses consciousness and Szell pauses his torture.
Babe is then rescued by Janeway, who apparently kills Szell's bodyguards and takes Babe from Szell's hideout. As he drives, Janeway explains that Szell is in America to sell off his large cache of diamonds, which he had taken from Jews he had exterminated at Auschwitz during World War II. Janeway continually presses Babe about Doc's dying words, but Babe again insists he knows nothing. Frustrated, Janeway reveals himself as a double agent working with the Nazi criminal all along, and he turns Babe over to Karl and Erhardt (Janeway had only faked killing them). Szell, it turns out, is one of Janeway's highest level informants, and had informed on other Nazi war criminals in return for immunity.
Delivered back into Szell's hands, the Nazi has a curiously kindly conversation with Babe before calmly explaining why he is holding Babe for questioning--Szell suspected that Doc would attempt to rob him of his diamonds, or rat on him to authorities; thus his desire to know if it's "safe" to withdraw the diamonds, i.e., whether Doc told Babe any incriminating information. Still unable to extract anything from Babe, he proceeds to drill into more of Babe's teeth. Babe eventually escapes again, this time on his own, with Janeway and Szell's two henchmen giving chase in a car. Though exhausted and barefoot, he is able to outrun his pursuers in part by remembering famed "marathon man" Abebe Bikila, who ran barefoot.
After hiring a neighborhood friend and his toughs to break into his apartment and steal his pistol (coincidentally, the same pistol his father used to commit suicide), Babe phones Elsa, who agrees to meet him with a car. She drives him to a country home as a hideout. Babe guesses that she has set him up; she confesses that Szell's dead brother owned the home, and that she set up Babe. Janeway and Szell's men arrive, but Babe avoids an ambush by taking Elsa hostage. In another twist, Janeway kills Szell's men and offers to let Babe kill Szell in revenge for Doc's death if Janeway can have the diamonds. Babe agrees, but as he leaves to find Szell, Janeway attempts to shoot Babe, but kills Elsa instead when she tries to alert Babe. Angered, Babe guns down Janeway.
Back in New York, Szell attempts to determine the value of his diamonds. However, he chooses an appraiser in the Diamond District in mid-town Manhattan, where many of the shop owners are Jewish. A shop assistant—an Auschwitz survivor—believes he has recognized Szell as a wanted Nazi criminal. After Szell hurriedly leaves the shop an elderly Jewish woman recognizes him, too, but passersby think she is senile. Trying to cross the street to get closer to Szell she is hit by a taxi, causing a crowd to assemble. Amidst the confusion the shop assistant appears again, directly confronting Szell. Becoming increasingly paranoid, Szell slits the man's throat with a retractable blade concealed in his sleeve.
Szell retrieves his diamonds from the bank, but, as he leaves, he is taken hostage by Babe, who inconspicuously forces him into Central Park and into one of the pump rooms at the south end of the Reservoir. Babe holds Szell at gunpoint on a scaffold and seizes the diamonds; rather than kill Szell, Babe informs him that he will allow Szell to live and keep as many diamonds as he can swallow. Szell initially refuses, prompting Babe to begin throwing the diamonds into the water below them. Szell relents and swallows one diamond, but then refuses to cooperate further. Szell goes on to insult Babe, and after he spits in Babe's face a fight erupts in which Szell tries to stab Babe. Babe throws the remainder of the diamonds down the scaffold steps towards the water; Szell dives for them, but stumbles, and falls fatally on his own knife blade.
Picking up his gun, Babe exits the pump room and heads out into Central Park. Stopping by the Hudson River, he heaves the gun into the water, no longer needing the weapon, his demons put to rest. With a new resolve, Babe walks off into the distance, not looking back, as the credits begin to roll.
Differences between the novel and film
The film is largely faithful to the novel, perhaps because William Goldman also wrote the screenplay (although the film and the novel have different endings).
- In the film, Doc is depicted as a government agent from the beginning, while in the novel his dual identity is suggested but not explicitly obvious until the gravely wounded Doc arrives at his brother's apartment.
- An 8½ minute sequence was shot of Doc fighting with some men who kill a spy. William Goldman speculates that it was cut because it was violent, but that it was a "grievous" cut to the detriment of the film.[1] With the sequence missing, Doc's character seems to be less flawed than he really is.[1]
- The ending was rewritten, according to Goldman, because Hoffman was unhappy with it.[2] Goldman was not sure who wrote it, but told an interviewer he thought the new ending was "shit" because it left out two important plot clarifications.[2]
- The character Doc was explicitly in a homosexual relationship in the novel, though Goldman changed the script to merely hint at the character's sexuality.[3] (In Brothers, the sequel to the Marathon Man novel, Doc additionally engages in heterosexual sex.) Doc's love interest "Janey" is Agent Janeway. It is never explicitly mentioned, but as soon as Janeway introduces himself to Babe by "my friends call me Janey", the similar phrase, formerly used in a romantic dialog between Doc and Janey on the phone, is obvious.
Trivia
- The dental torture scene in this film was named #66 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
- In the 2004 science fiction film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, ace mechanic Dex (Giovanni Ribisi) disables the holographic image of Laurence Olivier as the supervillain Dr. Totenkopf, prompting Sky Captain (Jude Law) to ask, "Is it safe?" This is an homage to Olivier who repeatedly spoke this line of dialog in Marathon Man. Jude Law had suggested Olivier as the film's villain to director Kerry Conran.[4]
- During the filming of the movie, Hoffman, a dedicated Method actor, allegedly stayed up for two nights in order to more accurately portray Babe's exhaustion after being tortured by Szell. A bemused Olivier reportedly retorted, "Try acting... it's much easier!" After denying the story for years, Hoffman eventually admitted that he had been up all night partying, and Olivier was referring to his lifestyle rather than his acting technique. The episode led to persistent reports that Olivier and Hoffman disliked each other, but Hoffman has stated that the two were actually friendly despite the differences in their approach and that they had great admiration for each other.
- Olivier's character Szell is known as "The White Angel," a clear allusion to notorious (and, at the time, still living) Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who was known as the "Angel of Death." Two years after Marathon Man, Olivier played a Nazi-hunter pitted against Mengele in the film The Boys From Brazil.
Notes
References
- Bradey, John Joseph. The Craft of the Screenwriter: Interviews with Six Celebrated Screenwriters (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981)
External links
