I don't know that many people remember this now, but for an incandescent period in time, William Goldman was writing the finest pulp thrillers in American letters: Heat (made into a horrible film starring Burt Reynolds); Magic (made into a mediocre film starring Anthony Hopkins); Boys and Girls Together and Tinsel (marvellous bits of Wolfe-ian social history); Control (the best time travel novel that can never be made into a film); The Princess Bride (made into a pretty good film by Meathead); and, of course, there was Marathon Man. Something's dirty about these Goldman works--they're so compactly and elegantly crafted yet also so essentially off-kilter and creepy that you feel as though you're being worked over by a sterile brickbat.

Goldman's novels are full of economic twists and a careful construction of a skewed reality that bugger efforts to categorize them: they fall somewhere between traditional thrillers and science-fiction. They seem so cinematic that it comes as an almost total shock when it's gradually revealed that there have been details cunningly left out--stuff like the identity of the best friend in Magic, or the revelation that the characters in Control do not actually occupy the same space--so to speak. There's a revelation like that in Marathon Man--I'm not going to tell you what it is, but sufficed to say that it matters a great deal more in the novel than it does in the excellent John Schlesinger film.

That's by design and necessity. The fact that Corky's best pal in Magic is a ventriloquist's dummy can't be concealed from a viewing audience, thus Anthony Hopkins trying to convey a meaningful relationship with a hunk of wood. Translating William Goldman to the screen (an unenviable task often undertaken by the two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter himself), then, requires that the fantastic cleverness of the writing and plotting be largely abandoned in favour of more traditionally "fair" methods of visual storytelling. Goldman's strengths as a novelist are betrayed by any translation to film, and though The Princess Bride does an interesting thing by maintaining the wily artifice of Goldman's work through a theatrical approach, I would argue that the best pure translation of a Goldman novel in all its dirty, off-kilter, creepy glory is 1976's Marathon Man.

Babe (Dustin Hoffman) is a brilliant graduate student who has just found the love of his life in an exotic Swiss nursing student, Elsa (Marthe Keller). He fills his days and nights with her and we're so interested in their love story that we almost forget about a strange prologue wherein an old German and an old Jew got involved in a little road rage that led to a fatal accident. That's why it's such a shock when Babe and Elsa are brutally mugged one day after dallying too long in Central Park. We've forgotten for a moment that Marathon Man is a thriller, but then Babe writes to his older brother, Doc (Roy Scheider), to tell him of his humiliation. Doc pays Babe a visit, and evil Nazi dentist Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) pays Doc a visit, and the fiery explosion that opens Marathon Man suddenly has a special meaning to everyone.

Marathon Man is a film about internal violation. It explores every aspect of personal desecration (physical, emotional, psychological) with an excruciating, nearly unbearable fastidiousness. Babe's home is violated, his body is despoiled (in the film's most infamous scene), his romantic love is betrayed, his filial love is tested, the memory of his father (ruined by McCarthy) is raped, and even his racial legacy as a Jewish man at the mercy of a Nazi tormentor is resurrected. There is no aspect of Babe's life that remains unsullied by the end of the film (even his long-distance running is mocked by his neighbours). While the ending can be seen as somewhat upbeat, a closer examination reveals that it's merely Babe reverting to the one thing of his existence that is left after the winnowing fire of incomprehensible catastrophes.

Marathon Man is a story about endurance--one that can be expanded to encompass the enduring nature of humanity and most particularly the enduring spirit of the American people in a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post-JFK, RFK, MLK assassination cynicism and malaise. It is a proud member of the best decade in American cinema, shining in its evocation of that period's adolescent nihilism and providing, as the best films of that time did, either an outright defeat of the protagonist or, in this case, an ironic and hollow victory. The only thing sure about everyman Babe in Marathon Man and American film of the seventies is that we will endure even if we don't know how--and even if we don't want to any longer. Marathon Man is a statement about the strength of the United States: that bull-headed will to power despite the arrows of outrageous fortune painting its flanks. It's one of the most underrated thrillers in history, too, featuring a jarring score by Michael Small (that reminds a great deal of his work in Night Moves and The Parallax View), a quintet of fantastic performances from Scheider, Olivier, Hoffman, Keller, and William Devane, and John Schlesinger's outsider intimacy with the festering mean streets of New York.

Paramount's DVD release of Marathon Man was worth the long wait. Presented in a beautiful anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer, the visual quality is a revelation. Sure, the colours and sunlight outlines are a little soft, as is typical of a print twenty-five years old, but Paramount has coaxed a stupendous amount of clarity from the negative. Shadow detail is magnificent, particularly in a brief scene that introduces Doc in a tunnel surrounded by bicyclists and later, during his confrontation with Szell at a fountain. No need to kill the lights completely for this one. A note of interest involving Conrad Hall's cinematography: Marathon Man was the first film to employ the Steadicam technology, and it does just that in several wonderfully fluid tracking and establishing shots. Letterboxed and on DVD, I have discovered, is the only way to view this film.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix is rich and sumptuous. Although the numerous Small score stings, the whining dental drill, and occasional action flourishes (explosions, bullets) are impressive, giving the rear channels a nice rumbling workout and seat-squirming discomfort, I was most impressed by smaller moments involving atmospheric pencil scratches, footfalls, opera, and traffic noise. Care has been taken and it shows.

The 25-minute "Making of Marathon Man" featurette from 1977, narrated by producer Robert Evans (whose involvement with Chinatown brought scribe Robert Towne on board for a late, uncredited rewrite), is badly dated but valuable for extended interviews with Dustin Hoffman and for a touching documentation of the film's wrap party with an ailing, visibly moved Laurence Olivier accepting a present from the cast. A documentary called "Going the Distance: Remembering Marathon Man" (30 mins.) made especially for this release is packed with surprising new interviews from Hoffman, Scheider, Evans, and Goldman that detail the cast's collective affection for both Schlesinger and Olivier. Hoffman also reveals the strong attraction he had for Keller and the origins of a legendary exchange between Hoffman and Olivier that illustrates the differences in their performing styles. (After going sleepless for days to simulate Babe's frazzled state, Olivier asked Hoffman, "Dear boy, why don't you just act?").

A brilliant extended trailer (nicely restored) is one of those rare vintage previews that actually serves its function as an attractive teaser for the film, and twenty minutes of rehearsal footage, much of it improvised, between Keller, Hoffman, and Schneider, show off the lengths to which the trio of method actors went in creating the verisimilitude of life.-Walter Chaw

© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
125 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
English Mono,
French Mono
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English
DVD-9
Region One
Paramount

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Published: September 6, 2001