NYTimes Movie Review
Marathon Man (1976)
October 7, 1976
'Marathon Man' Thriller of a Film
By VINCENT CANBY
Published: October 7, 1976
If you were forced at gunpoint to swallow at $16,000 diamond, what would you do? Stall for time by asking for a glass of water? Say you were allergic? Cry? It's not a problem most of us are likely to face. It would seem to be too special to engage our interest at gut level. It's like worrying about what to do with a case of empty Dom Perignon bottles.
Yet when Laurence Olivier, who plays a sadistic ex-Nazi war criminal in "Marathon Man," confronts such a situation, it becomes a matter of universal concern and immense wit in spite of the desperate circumstances.
Szell (Olivier) places the diamond in his mouth and holds it between his front teeth as if it were an unpleasant pill. His eyes glaze slightly at the affront to his position. He pauses. His tongue tentatively touches the gem, but diamonds have no taste. He frowns. He is ordered to swallow. He would sneer but there's a gun aimed at his heart. Like a man forced to jump from the Empire State Building, he closes his eyes and does the deed. The diamond disappears into his gullet. Gulp and gone. What will it do to his ulcer?
Lord Olivier, one of the great ornaments of the English-speaking theater and cinema, helps to make John Schlesinger's "Marathon Man" a film that you won't want to miss, given a strong stomach for bloodshed and graphic torture that includes dental interference of an especially unpleasant sort.
In addition to Lord Olivier's superb performance, "Marathon Man" has several other superior things going for it: Dustin Hoffman as a moody, guilt-ridden, upper-West Side New Yorker, a haunted innocent obsessed with running, pursued by an unknown evil; Roy Scheider and William Devane as members of some sort of super-super Central Intelligence Agency, and the direction of Mr. Schlesinger, who has made a most elegant, bizarre, rococo melodrama out of material that, when you think about it, makes hardly any sense at all.
That's to say that when the lights come up at the end of "Marathon Man" and you start going through the plot, back to front, you're likely to suspect that you've been had. And you have if your only criterion is logic. The William Goldman screenplay, based on his novel, is built upon double-, triple-, and quadruple-crosses that finally cancel themselves out. Instead of logic, the film presents us with a literally breathtaking nightmare that turns out to be, within the film, absolutely true.
The nightmare is that of Babe (Mr. Hoffman), a Columbia graduate student who, for reasons he can't know, is kidnapped by mysterious parties with strange accents who torture him for information he doesn't have. The chief inquisitor is Szell, a notorious former Nazi with a degree in dentistry. "Is it safe?" Szell asks. "What safe?" asks Babe. "Is it safe?" the old Nazi asks again, and starts fiddling with the live nerve in one of Babe's teeth.
When the explanations do start coming, you may feel that "Marathon Man" is a kind of thriller that has run its course. High-level conspiracies really aren't that interesting unless we can get a fix on who is doing what to whom, which is never clear here. Yet the individual details of "Marathon Man," the performances, and the attention given to its physical settings—in New York, Paris and South America—keep one's belief willingly suspended by a wickedly thin thread.
For the first third of the film, Mr. Schlesinger manages to crosscut between two different narratives so effectively that it's almost a disapopintment when they come together, but though the plot is ridiculous, the film is richly fleshed out by character and and an intensifying sense of menace that doesn't rely on tricks. When a fellow, lying back in his hot tub relaxing, is suddenly disturbed by someone trying to break down the door, it's an assassin, not a steam-induced dream.
Which, I suspect, is why "Marathon Man" leaves one feeling comfortably exhausted and not cheated, as does a more serious but equally paranoid political thriller like Francesco Rosi's "Illustrious Corpses." "Marathon Man" hasn't a real idea in its head. It just wants to scare the hell out of you—and it does.
MARATHON MAN, directed by John Schlesinger; screenplay by William Goldman, based on his novel; produced by Robert Evans and Sidney Beckerman; director of photography, Conrad Hall; editor, Jim Clark; music, Michael Small; distributed by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 125 minutes. At Loews State 1, Broadway at 45th Street, and Loews Tower East, Third Avenue near 72d Street. This film has been rated R.
Babe . . . . . Dustin Hottman
Szell . . . . . Laurence Olivier
Doc . . . . . Roy Scheider
Janeway . . . . . William Devane
Elsa . . . . . Marthe Keller
Prof. Blesenthal . . . . . Fritz Weaver
Karl . . . . . Richard Bright
Erhard . . . . . Marc Lawrence
Babe's father . . . . . Allen Joseph
Melendez . . . . . Tito Goya
Szell's brother . . . . . Ben Dova
Rosenbaum . . . . . Lou Gilbert
LeClerc . . . . . Jacques Marin
Chen . . . . . James Wing Woo
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