Marathon Man (1976)

Marathon Man is an American thriller film first released in 1976, directed by John Schlesinger.  The film stars Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane and Marthe Keller.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Babe Levy is a graduate student at Columbia University who is still haunted by the suicide of his father, an alleged victim of the McCarthy witchhunts.  His older brother Doc shares none of his anxieties and has made a successful career in the oil business - at least, that is what he wants Babe to think.  In truth, Doc is a covert US government agent, working in murky areas that neither the FBI nor the CIA would touch.   Doc has returned to New York in pursuit of Szell, a Nazi war criminal who has been exposing other former Nazis for cash.   Although now in his late sixties, Szell is still a dangerous and ruthless man, as Doc discovers when they meet.  Having received a fatal stab wound from Szell, Doc manages to drag himself to Babe’s apartment and dies in his brother’s arms.  Not long afterwards, Babe is visited by one of Doc’s associates, who warns him that he is in great danger.  Sure enough, Babe is captured by Szell’s henchmen and taken to the former Nazi, who is convinced that the student knows more than he should.  Szell’s field of expertise is using dentists’ tools to extract the truth from his victims.  Babe’s nerve-wracking nightmare has only just begun...

One of the most tense, traumatic and well-paced thrillers of the seventies, Marathon Man still manages to chill the blood with its set-piece torture scene, a supreme piece of cinematic nastiness that is guaranteed to put you off ever seeing a dentist again.  In an Oscar-nominated role that reinvigorated his career at a time when he was in poor health, Laurence Olivier creates one of cinema’s most memorable villains, the sadistic Nazi war criminal Dr Szell.   In stark contrast to the overly theatrical turns of his earlier years, Olivier is subdued and quietly menacing here, just sufficiently sinister to scare the living bejesus out of his audience.  His line "Is it safe?", repeated several times in a flat but vicious monotone, is one that will haunt you forever.

Dustin Hoffman also turns in a respectable performance, totally convincing as the dog-eared university student who is plunged into a Kafkaesque world of shadows and intrigue.  The raw energy that Hoffman brings to the film helps to keep up the momentum, even when the plot begins to sag and fragment towards the middle.  And the plot is the film’s blistered Achilles heel.  Beset by contrivances which attain ridiculous heights of unbelievability and with numerous story strands that don’t quite come together, it is amazing that the film works as well as it does.

Proving that a good film doesn’t necessarily have to rely on a good plot, John Schlesinger brings an auteur’s enthusiasm and ingenuity to his direction.  Note how skilfully he and his crew use the subjective camera to draw the audience into the drama and convey the kind of intense visceral violence which could not, at the time, be explicitly shown on the screen. The film’s pace and slick stylisation distract us from the numerous gaping plot cavities and keep us hooked right up until the famous jewel swallowing denouement.  Olivier’s sepulchral presence adds to the cold realism of the piece, helping to make this one of Hollywood’s most disturbing and riveting thrillers.  After watching Marathon Man, that trip to the dentist will never be the same again.  Is it safe?  Is it safe?  No, it’s bloody terrifying.

© Steve Chandler 2010

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