MARATHON MAN d: John Schlesinger
by Andre Soares
Marathon Man (1976)
Director: John Schlesinger. Screenplay: William Goldman (Robert Towne did some uncredited work on the script), from Goldman’s novel. Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane, Marthe Keller
WITHOUT ANESTHESIA
The worst sin a good-guy-vs.-bad-guy movie can commit is to — unintentionally — have us root for the evildoer. That is exactly what screenwriter William Goldman (adapting his own novel; with some help from Robert Towne) and director John Schlesinger, he of the classic film dramas Darling, Midnight Cowboy, and Sunday, Bloody Sunday, achieve in the thrill-less "thriller" Marathon Man. Adding insult to injury, the villain I came to root for was a horrific Nazi war criminal, while the hero that bored me to tears was a pacifist Jew.
Now, how could anyone manage to tip the scale toward such a monstrous character, especially when we have a Jewish hero fighting him? Well, ask Laurence Olivier, who has a grand old time as Dr. Christian Szell (inspired by the concentration camps’ Angel of Death, Josef Mengele), as he eliminates from view every lesser actor with whom he comes in contact. Schlesinger and Goldman should have done a good balancing act so our hero would be a match to the fascinating villain, but neither they nor star Dustin Hoffman succeed in making the peacenik-turned-avenger protagonist into anything more intriguing than a one-dimensional movie dud.
Like other 1970s conspiracy films such as The Parallax View and The Odessa File, Marathon Man actually starts out well, with a preposterous but well-edited car chase through the streets of New York City, a furtive encounter at an antique shop in Paris, and a bomb-laden baby carriage that explodes on a Parisian street. From then on, the film goes precipitously downhill.
Someone somewhere forgot to add a brain to most of the characters and a modicum of sense to the intricate plot. Although the filmmakers bravely attempt to make everything so confusing that the viewer won’t notice the absurdity of it all, missing here is the sort of cinematic flair that would have made at least marginally acceptable plot holes the size of continents. (Check out Howard Hawks’s impenetrable — but enjoyable — The Big Sleep.) A generally capable director, Schlesinger gets lost trying to create both human drama and movie thrills. The end result is that Marathon Man offers precious little of either.
Since the plot must keep on rolling, there are secretive meetings, a one-eyed East Asian villain, a mysterious woman (Marthe Keller, sans any mystery), silly Hitchcockian touches lifted from Rear Window and Dial M for Murder, and people doing stupid things (such as never calling the police when in danger) because it’s a movie.
The plot, by the way, is some murky trifle about precious stones that have been hidden in a vault in New York. Fugitive Nazi and former sadistic dentist Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) escapes from an alternate-reality (tropical) Uruguay to New York because he wants those gems at all costs. Szell believes that Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) knows where they are, for Hoffman’s Babe is the brother (apparently of different parents) of Roy Scheider’s double agent, Doc Levy.
The poor Babe, of course, is completely innocent — and must suffer for his ignorance. Szell mercilessly drills Babe’s mouth in a sequence that is nearly as harrowing as it is funny. "Is it safe?" Szell asks Babe time and again. Neither the drilled Babe nor we know what the hell Szell is talking about, but I loved Olivier’s campy German accent anyway.
Once Olivier enters the scene in the film’s second half, Marathon Man perks up whenever the veteran actor is on screen. "The land of plenty," Szell says with utter disdain upon his arrival in chaotic, strike-plagued New York City. "They were always so confident God was on their side. Now I think they’re not so sure." With that same nonchalance, he looks for oil inside Babe’s mouth, kills off people right and left, and gets his comeuppance with the flair of a shameless scene-stealer. (Olivier’s bad guys — Richard III, Othello — are usually much more interesting than his heroes.) Ultimately, Laurence Olivier’s presence in Marathon Man is what makes this picture more tolerable than two hours in a dentist’s chair.
Synopsis:
A deadly car crash takes place in New York City. A baby carriage explodes on a Paris street. An American secret agent, Henry "Doc" Levy (Roy Scheider), is almost killed by an Asian man with one blue eye. In the meantime, Levy’s brother (Dustin Hoffman), a New Yorker nicknamed Babe by his family and friends — and Creep by his neighbors — is trying to write a paper for his graduate class. The younger, pacifist Levy leads a lonely, mundane life: besides going to grad school, he jogs, studies, and obsesses about his father, who committed suicide in the 1950s because he was being persecuted for his left-leaning politics.
Now, it’s Babe’s time to be hounded. But instead of American right-wing fanatics, he is pursued by German right-wing fanatics, Nazis, and their double-dealing American cohorts who are all after a suitcase containing precious gems. Doc had been involved with them, and is murdered by Nazi war criminal and sadistic dentist Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier). With Doc dead, Szell sees the innocent Babe as the key to the precious suitcase. The evil dentist has Babe kidnapped, but despite drilling left and right inside Babe’s mouth he learns nothing from his victim.
By a fluke, the orally bereaved Babe manages to escape his captors. He must now find a way to save himself from the same fate. The problem is that he is also in love with a mysterious European, Elsa Opel (Marthe Keller), who may or may not be the sole nice-looking member of the Nazi gang. Ever more paranoid, Babe decides that he can trust no one.
Notes:
Method actor Dustin Hoffman reportedly would jog before his jogging scenes, so he’d really be out of breath when the cameras began rolling. During a scene in which he is nearly drowned in his bathtub, Hoffman asked his would-be killers to keep his head under water for as long as possible so he’d really be gasping for air. However, no reports have come out indicating that Hoffman requested that his teeth be pulled without anesthesia for the infamous dentist chair scene. The screaming, apparently, was really all acting.
Hoffman says that Laurence Olivier’s oft-quoted remark, "Why not try acting? It’s much easier," came out of concern for Hoffman’s excessive partying while trying to forget his personal problems (he was getting divorced from his first wife at the time). It was not a put-down of his Method acting style.
Dr. Szell is based on real Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death, and who at the time was living undercover in South America. Following a drowning accident, Mengele died in Brazil in 1979.
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