Marathon Man

A graduate student and obsessive runner in New York is drawn into a mysterious plot involving his brother, a member of the secretive Division.



A history student becomes caught in the middle of a dangerous international plot involving Nazis, stolen jewels, and government agents.



Thomas "Babe" Levy, whose brother Henry James "Doc" Levy is an oil business executive, is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Columbia University. He is also training as a marathon runner. Babe is paying homage to his deceased father, H.B. Levy, in pursuing the same studies as he, the father who committed suicide while being under investigation in the Communist witch hunts. Babe's work does not sit well with Doc who wants Babe to move on with his life. While at Columbia, Babe meets and begins to date Elsa Opel, a foreign exchange student also in History. While out for a walk in Central Park late one night, Babe and Elsa are mugged, the unusual aspect of it being that their attackers were men in suits. Babe will learn that the mugging was not a random attack after someone close to Babe is found murdered, the deceased whom was not whom he purported to be. From here, Babe is thrown into an international conspiracy concerning Nazi war criminal Christian Szell in hiding, and a large cache of diamonds. In the process, Babe learns that Szell's associates are after him believing that he was passed sensitive information by the deceased before his death. Not knowing anything about what's going on, Babe has to decide whom he can and cannot trust while he works to find out what's going on. In Babe discovering what's happening around him, his issue with Szell becomes personal.
—Huggo



Babe Levy is a Columbia University graduate student and avid runner who is haunted by the memory of his father's suicide, brought about by the McCarthy witch-hunts. Babe's brother, Doc, an American secret agent, helps sneak Szell, an old Nazi, into the US from South America. Szell's brother, who has watched over a fortune in jewels taken from Jewish concentration camp victims, has died, and Szell has come to New York to collect the booty. After killing Doc, Szell uses the tools of his dentist's trade to torture Babe for information the student doesn't possess. Putting his marathon training to use, Babe escapes Szell, and eventually the pursuer becomes the pursued.




In New York, marathon runner Thomas "Babe" Levy is a graduate student who researches history as his father, who committed suicide after being investigated in the Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era. His brother Henry James "Doc" Levy appears out of the blue from time to time because his family never knows where he is, working as a government agent. One of his charges is an infamous Nazi war criminal whom he has just told is no longer welcome in the United States. Dr. Christian Szell has a fortune hidden in a safe deposit box and is convinced that Babe knows whether or not it is safe to go to pick it up and will stop at nothing to find out.
—John Vogel





SYNOPSIS

Thomas "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a history Ph.D. candidate and avid marathon runner researching the same field as his father, who committed suicide after being investigated in the Communist witch hunts of the Joseph McCarthy era. Babe's brother, Henry James Levy (Roy Scheider), known only as "Doc", poses as an oil company executive but in fact is a U.S. government agent working for a secret agency headed up by Director Peter Janeway (William Devane). Babe is not aware of his brother's true occupation.

Doc is often supposedly out of the country on business for extended periods of time, but comes to New York under the guise of a visit to Babe. The brother of a Nazi war criminal possesses a safety deposit box key, but is killed in a traffic accident (after a road rage altercation with a short tempered middle-aged Jewish American motorist). Doc suspects that the criminal, Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) will be arriving to retrieve an extremely valuable diamond collection. Szell later sends a burly assassin named Chen (James Wing Woo) to kill Doc in his Paris hotel room, but Doc fights the hit man and breaks his back.

Babe enters into a relationship with a young woman named Elsa Opel (Marthe Keller), who claims to be from Switzerland. One night while out on a date Elsa and Babe are mugged in a park by two men dressed in suits. Some time later, Doc takes the couple to lunch, where he tricks Elsa into revealing that she has been lying to Babe about her background. Though Doc suspects she may have some connection to Szell, he tells Babe only that she is seeking an American husband so that she can become a U.S. citizen.

After Szell arrives in America, Doc meets him to tell the former Nazi he is not welcome in the country, and also to warn Szell to stay away from Babe. Szell casually accepts the pronouncement, but then swiftly knifes Doc, wounding him severely. Doc is able to make it back to his brother's apartment, but collapses and dies in Babe's arms without telling him anything. The police interrogate Babe for hours, until government agents led by Peter Janeway arrive. Janeway asks Babe what Doc told him before he died, and informs Babe of his brother's career as a U.S. government agent. Babe insists that his brother did not tell him anything, but Janeway feels that Doc struggled all the way to Babe's apartment to give him vital information of some kind.

Babe is later abducted from his apartment by Szell's henchmen, Karl and Erhardt (the two men from the park). In an infamous sequence, Babe is tortured by Szell, a skilled dentist, who repeatedly asks "Is it safe?" Confused by the question code phrase he does not understand, Babe denies any knowledge, but is tortured. The dentist offers him oil of cloves, an anesthetic, as positive inducement to cooperate. Eventually, Babe loses consciousness and Szell pauses his torture.

Babe is then rescued by Janeway, who apparently kills Szell's bodyguards and takes Babe from Szell's hideout. As he drives, Janeway explains that Szell is in America to sell off his large cache of diamonds, which he had taken from Jews he had exterminated at Auschwitz during World War II. Janeway continually presses Babe about Doc's dying words, but Babe again insists he knows nothing. Frustrated, Janeway reveals himself as a double agent working with the Nazi criminal all along, and he turns Babe over to Karl and Erhardt (Janeway had only faked killing them). As it turns out, Szell is one of Janeway's highest level informants, and had informed on other Nazi war criminals in return for immunity.

Delivered back into Szell's hands, the Nazi criminal has a curiously kindly conversation with Babe before calmly explaining why he is holding Babe for questioning. Szell suspected that Doc would attempt to rob him of his diamonds, or rat on him to authorities; thus his desire to know if it's "safe" to withdraw the diamonds, i.e., whether Doc told Babe any incriminating information. Still unable to extract anything from Babe, he proceeds to drill into one of Babe's healthy teeth. Babe eventually escapes again, this time on his own, with Janeway and Szell's two henchmen giving chase in a car. Though exhausted and barefoot, he is able to outrun his pursuers in part by remembering famous "marathon man" Abebe Bikila, who ran barefoot.

After inviting a neighborhood acquaintance and his toughs to break into his apartment and steal his pistol (the same pistol his father used to commit suicide), Babe phones Elsa, who agrees to meet him with a car. She drives him to a country home as a hideout. Babe guesses that she has set him up; she confesses that Szell's dead brother owned the home, and that she was one of Szell's couriers. Janeway and Szell's men arrive, but Babe avoids an ambush by taking Elsa hostage. In another twist, Janeway kills Szell's men and offers to let Babe kill Szell in revenge for Doc's death if Janeway can have the diamonds. Babe agrees, but as he leaves to find Szell, Janeway attempts to shoot Babe, but kills Elsa instead when she tries to alert Babe. Angered, Babe guns down Janeway.

Back in New York, Szell attempts to determine the value of his diamonds. However, he chooses an appraiser in the Diamond District in midtown Manhattan, where many of the shop owners are Jewish. A shop assistant who is also an Auschwitz survivor believes he has recognized Szell as a wanted Nazi criminal. After Szell hurriedly leaves the shop, an elderly Jewish woman also recognizes him, but passersby think she is senile. Trying to cross the street to get closer to Szell in order to expose him she is hit by a taxicab, causing a crowd to assemble to assist her. Amidst the confusion, the shop assistant appears again, directly confronting Szell. Becoming increasingly paranoid, Szell slits the man's throat with a retractable blade concealed in his sleeve.

Szell retrieves his diamonds from the bank, but is taken hostage by Babe as he attempts to leave, who inconspicuously forces him into Central Park and into one of the pump rooms at the south end of the Reservoir. Babe holds Szell at gunpoint on a scaffold and seizes the diamonds; rather than kill Szell, Babe informs him that he will allow Szell to live and keep as many diamonds as he can swallow. Szell initially refuses, prompting Babe to begin throwing the diamonds into the water below them. Szell relents and swallows one diamond, but then refuses to cooperate further. Szell goes on to insult Babe, and after he spits in Babe's face, a fight erupts in which Szell tries to stab Babe. Babe throws the remainder of the diamonds down the scaffold steps towards the water; Szell dives for them, but stumbles, and fatally falls on his own knife blade. Picking up his gun, Babe exits the pump room and heads out into Central Park. Stopping by the Reservoir, he throws the gun into the water.