Marathon Man is a 1976 American suspense thriller film directed by John Schlesinger, adapted by William Goldman from his 1974 novel of the same title. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane and Marthe Keller. The film is about "Babe" Levy (Hoffman), a Columbia University graduate student and distance runner who becomes unwittingly embroiled through his brother in a plot by Nazi war criminal Christian Szell (Olivier) to retrieve ill-gotten diamonds from a safe deposit box owned by Szell's dead brother.
The film was released by Paramount Pictures on October 8, 1976, and was both a critical and commercial success. For his performance, Olivier won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for the Academy Award in the same category. The film was also nominated for four other Golden Globe awards, including Best Director, Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama (for Hoffman) and Best Actress (for Keller). It also received BAFTA Award nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Hoffman) and Best Editing.
Plot
Thomas Babington "Babe" Levy is a history student and distance runner at Columbia University in New York City who seeks to rehabilitate the memory of his father, who committed suicide during McCarthyism. A fiery car accident kills Klaus Szell, the brother of Nazi war criminal Christian Szell, who was a dentist at a concentration camp, as well as a Jewish immigrant named Rosenbaum. Babe's brother Henry ("Doc"), whom Babe believes is an oil company executive, is actually a member of a secret government agency that handles jobs too extreme for either the FBI or CIA. Doc is a courier for the transportation of diamonds owned by Szell and kept in a safe deposit box in New York City. Doc meets his contact LeClerc in Paris. Doc survives attacks directed at him, and LeClerc is killed by an assassin named Chen. Fortunately, Doc eliminates Chen after a minor struggle. When Doc takes Babe and his Swiss girlfriend Elsa Opel to lunch, he tricks Elsa into revealing that she is actually German and has been operating under false pretenses about her background.
Although Doc suspects she may have connections to Szell, he informs Babe that Elsa is seeking an American husband to gain U.S. citizenship. Szell, having learned of his brother's death, secretly arrives in New York from Uruguay to collect and sell the diamonds, and the couriers are mysteriously killed. When Doc and Szell meet, he is stabbed by Szell. Mortally wounded, Doc reaches Babe's apartment and dies before he is able to mention anything about what happened and why.
Szell, concerned over what Doc may have confided to Babe, has him kidnapped by two accomplices. Szell tortures Babe using his dental skills. Babe is rescued by Peter Janeway, who claims to be a colleague of Doc. He explains that Szell got rich by converting gold fillings he pulled from the teeth of Jews killed at Auschwitz, then converted the wealth into the even more concentrated form of diamonds. Janeway asks Babe about Doc's words, but Babe still insists he knows nothing. Frustrated, Janeway reveals himself to be a double agent and returns Babe to Szell. Even under further torture Babe is unable to divulge any information of value. At this point, Szell is convinced that Babe is clueless, and stops the torture. Babe escapes, aided by his prowess as a marathon runner, and he recruits his street-smart neighbors to burglarize his apartment and obtain his clothes and his father's gun.
Babe arms himself with the gun and phones Elsa, who agrees to meet him with a car. Arriving at a country house, Babe guesses that Elsa has set him up, and Elsa denies that she is working as Szell's mistress. The cottage was possessed by Klaus. When Janeway and Szell's henchmen, Karl and Erhard arrive, Babe holds everyone at gunpoint. Janeway kills Karl and Erhard in a gunfight when they try to shoot Babe, and Janeway offers to tell Babe where Szell will be in exchange for his safety and in retribution for Doc's murder. As Babe agrees and departs, Elsa tries to warn him of being double crossed as Janeway takes decisive action. In a fast twist, Janeway executes her and Babe fires through the window, killing Janeway.
Szell canvasses his cache, but is recognized by two Holocaust survivors, one of whom is a jewelry salesman Szell kills with his switchblade. Szell retrieves his diamonds, but as he leaves the Manhattan Diamond District to gauge the amount of his diamonds at the bank, Babe forces him at gunpoint to a pump house in the Central Park reservoir. Babe tells Szell that he can keep as many diamonds as he can swallow. After swallowing one diamond, Szell refuses to continue and says Babe, Doc and their father were weak before attacking him, but Babe dodges the stiletto and throws Szell's briefcase with the rest of the diamonds towards the water. Szell dives for them, and he stumbles down a spiral staircase, impales himself on his own blade and falls into the water. Babe then heads out into Central Park, stopping to throw his gun into the Reservoir.
Cast
Themes The film explores themes of endurance and the pursuit of Nazi war criminals.Bouzereau, Laurent. Ultraviolent Movies: from Sam Peckinpah to Quentin Tarantino. Citadel Press, September 1, 2000, 136. , .Erens, Patricia. The Jew in American Cinema. Indiana University Press, 1988. 348. Retrieved from Google Books on January 9, 2012. , .Phillips, Gene D. Major Film Directors of the American and British Cinema, Volume 1999. Lehigh University Press, 1999. 236. Retrieved from Google Books on January 30, 2012. , . Some critics believed that the exhibited violence was necessary to the film and to the character of Babe. Other critics found the violence to be offensive.Bouzereau, Laurent. Ultraviolent Movies: from Sam Peckinpah to Quentin Tarantino. Citadel Press, September 1, 2000. 135. Retrieved from Google Books on January 9, 2012. , . Critic Pauline Kael considered the film to be a "Jewish revenge fantasy".
The nickname given to Laurence Olivier's character, "" (The White Angel), was inspired by SS doctor Josef Mengele, whom some prisoners nicknamed the "Angel of Death" () or "The White Angel" because, when he stood on the platform of arrivals to concentration camps to make a selection of prisoners, he wore a distinctive white coat.
Babe originally has childish traits. As the film progresses, these childish traits are replaced with more adult ones. Michelle Citron of Jump Cut compared Babe to Carrie White in the 1976 film Carrie."Carrie meets Marathon Man." Jump Cut. No. 14, 1977. P. 10-12.
Janeway is interested only in his own gain instead of the ideal to advance US interests. Paul Cobley stated in The American Thriller: Generic Innovation and Social Change in the 1970s that Janeway "can be read as the impersonality of late capitalism [...] or a post-Foucaldian embodiment of the shifting locations of power", or "a representative of the vicissitudes of the market".Cobley, Paul. The American Thriller: Generic Innovation and Social Change in the 1970s. Springer Publishing, November 9, 20009. , 9780333985120. p. 157. Cobley identifies Melendez and his group as Janeway's "nemesis".Cobley, Paul. The American Thriller: Generic Innovation and Social Change in the 1970s. Springer Publishing, November 9, 20009. , 9780333985120. p. 158.
Differences from the novel In the novel, Janeway and Doc are lovers. This is handled subtly in the movie (when Doc arrives in Paris, he calls Janeway on the phone and says, "Janie, I miss you. Get your ass over here [to the hotel room]"). In the book, their sexual relationship is not subtle at all, and has Doc pining for Janeway at several points.
The ending was rewritten by Robert Towne; it has been speculated that this was because Hoffman was unhappy with it.Bradey, p. 166. Goldman told an interviewer that he thought the new, more famous ending was "shit" because it left out two important plot clarifications. The final confrontation between Babe and Szell, in particular, is changed. In the film, Babe "spares" Szell in a pump room and tries forcing him to swallow his diamonds, and Szell falls on his own retractable blade, dying. In the novel, Babe resolutely leads Szell to Central Park and shoots him multiple times, subsequently lecturing him. He throws the diamonds away and is quietly led away by a policeman.
Production Pre-production Goldman was paid a reported , equivalent to $ million in , for the film rights to his novel, and to write a screenplay, before the novel had been published. Another source said that it was $450,000, equivalent to $ million in . - Clipping of first page (Detail 1, Detail 2), second page, third page, fourth page, and fifth page from Newspapers.com.
"The book reads like the movie-movie of all time", said producer Robert Evans. "I regard it as a cheap investment because you don't often find books that translate into film. This is the best thing I've read since The Godfather. It could go all, all the way — if we don't foul it up in the making." - Clipping from Newspapers.com
Goldman estimated that he wrote four versions of the screenplay, and says that Robert Towne was brought in at the end. - Clipping of first page and of second page (detail 1, detail 2, and detail 3) from Newspapers.com.
Goldman says that John Schlesinger agreed to do the film only because he had just finished The Day of the Locust and was "terrified he was dead in Hollywood". Goldman says "all the stuff dealing with cities in crisis" in an original draft of the script was Schlesinger's idea although "Almost none of it made the finished film."Goldman, 1995, p x
Casting John Schlesinger originally envisioned Al Pacino, Julie Christie, and Laurence Olivier in the lead roles, and Robert Shaw as Janeway. Robert Evans vetoed Pacino and proposed Dustin Hoffman in the lead.
Olivier was cast early on. However, he had health problems, and at one stage, it was uncertain if he would be able to appear in the film. Richard Widmark auditioned for the part, but Olivier eventually recovered and was able to participate in filming.
Silent film actress Madge Kennedy, whom Schlesinger befriended during the production of The Day of the Locust, made her final on-screen appearance in this film.
Filming The film was shot from October 1975 to February 1976. Filming took place on-location in New York City, Paris, and Los Angeles. The only purpose-built set used in the film was the interior of the Central Park reservoir, which was reconstructed on the Paramount Pictures backlot. The resulting set was so large it took up two soundstages.
Marathon Man was the second feature film production in which inventor-operator Garrett Brown used his then-new Steadicam, after Bound for Glory. However, it was the first feature using the Steadicam that saw theatrical release, predating the premieres of both Bound for Glory and Rocky by two months. This new camera stabilization system was used extensively in Marathon Mans running and chase scenes on the streets of New York City.
"Why don't you just try acting?" Marathon Man is famous in acting circles for an often quoted exchange between Hoffman and Olivier concerning a perceived difference in their approaches to acting.
In the usual telling of the story, Hoffman, a proponent of method acting, prepared for a scene in which his character had been awake for three days by doing the same himself. When he told this to Olivier, Olivier remarked, "My dear boy, why don't you just try acting?" In an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, Hoffman said that this exchange had been distorted; that he had been up all night at a nightclub for personal rather than professional reasons, and Olivier, who was aware of this, was merely joking.
Deleted scenes