Marathon Man (film)
| Marathon Man | |
|---|---|
Movie poster by Bill Gold
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| Directed by | John Schlesinger |
| Produced by |
Robert Evans Sidney Beckerman |
| Screenplay by | William Goldman |
| Based on |
Marathon Man by William Goldman |
| Starring |
Dustin Hoffman Laurence Olivier Roy Scheider William Devane Marthe Keller |
| Music by | Michael Small |
| Cinematography | Conrad Hall |
| Edited by | Jim Clark |
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Production
company |
Robert Evans-Sidney Beckerman Productions
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| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
|
125 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $6.5 million |
| Box office | $28.2 million |
Marathon Man is a 1976 American suspense-thriller film directed by John Schlesinger. It was adapted by William Goldman from his 1974 novel of the same name and stars Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane and Marthe Keller. The music score was composed by Michael Small.
The film was a critical and box office success, with Olivier earning a Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination for his role as the film's antagonist.
Thomas "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a history Ph.D. candidate and avid runner. Babe is researching the same field as his father, who committed suicide after the Communist witch hunts of the Joseph McCarthy era ruined his reputation. Babe's brother Henry (Roy Scheider), known as "Doc", presents himself as an oil company executive but is really a government agent, involved in an elaborate network of couriers who transport diamonds stolen during World War II from wealthy Jews seeking to flee Germany. The diamonds are sold for the benefit of fugitive Nazi war criminal Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), who in return helps in the hunt for other Nazi war criminals. Szell, a dentist who tortured Jews in a concentration camp, escaped capture and is now living off the diamond sales as a fugitive in South America (echoing real life Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele).
Christian Szell's brother, 72-year-old Klaus (Ben Dova), lives outside New York City and serves as the initial diamond courier, but is killed in a Manhattan road rage incident. Although Klaus' death was accidental, Christian suspects foul play and immediately puts everyone in the courier network under suspicion (anyone who obtains one of the two keys to the safe deposit box would immediately have access to a fortune in diamonds). Deducing this from hearing about the incident from his boss Peter Janeway (William Devane), Doc realizes that Christian Szell will have to travel to New York to retrieve the diamonds.
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Wikipedia