50 Years Later, A Divisive Crime Thriller Is Still More Than Its Most Infamous Quote

Paramount PicturesOnly a handful of movies are iconic enough to not only be known for a single line, but for a line that can instantly place us back in a moment that inspired awe, hilarity, or terror. “Use the Force,” “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” “They’re here,” “It’s Morbin’ time”… even though we probably first heard them out of context, we still know where we were and what we felt when we witnessed them on screen.“Is it safe?” used to be an easy inclusion on that list, although it’s more likely to elicit blank stares today. A staple of turn-of-the-millennium rundowns of the greatest thrillers, villains, moments, and quotes, Marathon Man is starting to slip into obscurity as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. That’s natural, but still regrettable, as the movie was always more than its most harrowing scene.Babe (Dustin Hoffman) is an aloof loner working on his history thesis at Columbia, and who has little to do beyond jog, flirt, and hit the books. Meanwhile, his equally mononymous brother, Doc (Roy Scheider), gallivants across Europe, dodging assassins and arranging clandestine meetings to fulfill his role in a diamond smuggling ring, all while Babe thinks he’s some oil industry bigwig. But if you’ve seen a thriller before, you know what’s going to happen: Doc’s luck runs out on a visit home, and Babe gets swept up in the machinations of his duplicitous colleagues.While Doc is initially presented as a suave criminal, a convoluted plot eventually reveals that he was a federal agent working on behalf of Nazi concentration camp dentist Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier). Szell has been hiding out in South America, and the American government has been helping him smuggle his ill-gotten fortune in exchange for dirt on other fugitive Nazis. But after Szell’s brother is killed in a wild road rage incident, Szell is forced to go to New York City to take control of his safety deposit box, where his paranoia triggers a wave of bloodshed that seriously disrupts Dustin Hoffman’s studies.Part of a parade of ‘70s thrillers that took a cynical view of power in post-Watergate America (aside from All the President’s Men, see Chinatown, Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, and the Nazi-based Odessa File and Boys From Brazil, among others), Marathon Man is unusually blunt about the relationship between fascism and state. Doc pokes fun at Babe’s bookish career, but if Doc had read a few history books himself, he would have learned that everyone who thought they could control and manipulate the fascists among them was proven horribly wrong.If you’re familiar with Marathon Man, this is probably the reason why. | Paramount PicturesMeanwhile, Doc’s corrupt partner (played by William Devane, and distractingly to modern sci-fi fans, named Janeway) is happy to abandon America’s ideals and reap the benefits, until violence inevitably comes for him, too. Szell, for his part, is callous but no ideologue; he’s interested only in profit, and he ultimately burns down his entire network on the paranoid false assumption that Doc was possibly plotting to rob him. A half-century later, the echoes of all the bloodshed and destruction wrought by claims of economic anxiety are louder than ever. How many lives and institutions have been destroyed because some tax rates might have been bumped up a smidge?With all that in mind, Marathon Man is still a thriller meant to, you know, thrill you, and while its pace might seem stately to modern viewers, it still largely succeeds. It’s fun to watch Scheider play a cavalier secret agent, and once an overwhelmed Hoffman starts scrambling around grimy 1970s New York, his desperate edge makes a compelling contrast to his composed brother. And for all the potential political analysis, this is still a movie where Laurence Olivier wields a hidden arm-blade like he’s doing Assassin’s Creed cosplay.Dustin Hoffman attempts to go jogging in 1970s New York City. | Paramount PicturesSpeaking of, contemporary critics were split on Marathon Man’s violence, but the shootouts and stabbings won’t make you blink today (as cynical as the ‘70s were, some of its film writing is almost naive in retrospect). That Babe eventually guns down most of his pursuers before forcing Szell to swallow the diamonds he so covets was read by some viewers as a Jewish revenge fantasy; director John Schlesinger and screenwriter William Goldman, adapting his own novel, were both Jewish.But the more credible and interesting revenge comes earlier, when Szell, so sinister for much of the film, is reduced to wandering New York City’s Jewish-dominated diamond district, desperate to sell all that remains of his life to the people he stole from. He’s still dangerous, but he’s ultimately a pathetic figure of the past, one trying to cling to relevance in a world that’s happy to move on without him. Take away a fascist’s power, and all you have left is a miserable whiner.It’s for these reasons, rather than its fading memetic status, that Marathon Man remains worth watching 50 years later. It’s not the decade’s greatest thriller, but it might be the one that remains the most topical. That said, it’s also worth finding out why the movie’s most iconic line haunted viewers for decades. Just make sure you don’t have any visits to the dentist coming up.Marathon Man is available on YouTube.