The Marathon Bum

Although I have seen a countless number of movies, there are still a few classics I just either never got around to, or just had no interest in. Marathon Man was always a movie that interested me, but for some reason I just never sat down to watch it. Today, I finally did, and now I know that I should have watched it so much sooner.

Dustin Hoffman plays a jogging obsessive, graduate student that inadvertently gets involved in a mysterious plot involving his brother (Roy Scheider), who is working for a U.S. government group called “the division”. It all begins with the accidental death of the brother of Szell, a Nazi death camp doctor, and the unexplained safety deposit box that he left behind. Sir Lawrence Olivier is the character of Szell, a character that closely resembles Dr. Josef Mengele head SS Doctor of Auschwitz during WWII, and he is creepy. Most of the movie plays out in NYC circa 1975. It is always great seeing the way the city looked in the past. I’m not going to give away anything else, the whole point of the movie is the intrigue and suspense. Trying to figure out why they are screwing with this guy, what are they looking for?

When producer Robert Evans was casting he wanted Olivier to play Szell. At the time Olivier had cancer and was uninsurable for the film. So Evans got friends including David Niven to get him a meeting with the U.K. House of Lords, and got them to urge Lloyd’s of London in insure Olivier. The good knight paid back the favor by earning an Oscar nomination for the role, and then went on to hold off the cancer and live for another 13 years.

While watching the movie I came to the scene that reminded me of why I probably stayed away from it for so many years. Szell’s nickname was “the dentist”. He used to steal the gold from Jew’s teeth during the war. If any of you have seen the movie you know the moments I’m talking about. Once I saw Hoffman strapped down to the chair, and then Szell’s tools unravel I remembered hearing about the infamous interrogation scene. I’m o.k. with doctors, but I hate the dentist, and this movie does not help with that issue. The sound of the drill will send a shiver or two up your spine, but not as much as hearing Olivier repeating the notorious line “Is it safe?....Is it safe?......Is it safe?” over and over again.

I love new movies, but I adore revisiting, or discovering older ones even more.