Two generations of acting styles come together in Marathon Man. Dustin Hoffman plays a most reluctant hero a young pacifist graduate student at Columbia University who is a distance runner. He gets way over his head with an arch Nazi war criminal Laurence Olivier who did not drag out his patented Mittel-Europa accent. Instead he spoke a most precise English for the role, just like a foreigner having to learn the tongue.
His brother Roy Scheider is supposed to be in the oil business. Their father was a victim of the McCarthy Era blacklist who killed himself. Scheider actually works for a branch of the CIA, no doubt as Hoffman says the father would disapprove. I'm wondering how he got clearance.
A whole bunch of people from that section are dying and when Scheider dies Hoffman goes into action not knowing who to trust. But he's lucky, very lucky.
Olivier who has been living in South America in seclusion is forced to come to America to get his fortune in diamonds in a safety deposit vault. He's forced to do this after his brother is killed in a traffic accident right at the beginning of the film. Olivier's Dr. Szell is as terrifying a villain as his Richard III. It's what got him an Oscar nomination his only one in the Supporting Actor category.
Marathon Man has a lot of holes in the story, but the acting between Hoffman and Olivier is not to be missed.
His brother Roy Scheider is supposed to be in the oil business. Their father was a victim of the McCarthy Era blacklist who killed himself. Scheider actually works for a branch of the CIA, no doubt as Hoffman says the father would disapprove. I'm wondering how he got clearance.
A whole bunch of people from that section are dying and when Scheider dies Hoffman goes into action not knowing who to trust. But he's lucky, very lucky.
Olivier who has been living in South America in seclusion is forced to come to America to get his fortune in diamonds in a safety deposit vault. He's forced to do this after his brother is killed in a traffic accident right at the beginning of the film. Olivier's Dr. Szell is as terrifying a villain as his Richard III. It's what got him an Oscar nomination his only one in the Supporting Actor category.
Marathon Man has a lot of holes in the story, but the acting between Hoffman and Olivier is not to be missed.