Its a fact of storytelling that Nazis make the best villains in cinema. In this case, the man known as The White Angel is anything but: Dr. Christian Szell is a Nazi war criminal who made his name and his money running the experimental wing at Auschwitz in World War II. Writer William Goldman based the fictional Szell on real life Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, whose grotesque, barbaric experiments on the Jews in Auschwitz became a matter of infamy in the decades following the Allied liberation of the camps in 1945. Like Mengele, Szell manages to remain at large for decades after the war, when practically the whole world has him on their hit list. The White Angel had foreseen the end coming, and had begun accumulating a retirement fund for months before the end of the war, bargaining to quietly release the richer of his patients in exchange for diamonds (the trained dentist having realised that he wasnt raking in quite enough of a nest egg by hacking the gold teeth from their corpses). The events of Marathon Man are set three decades later, with the doctors incognito arrival in New York to pick up his jewels. Having murdered the US agent who had him under surveillance, Szell is paranoid that hell be picked up if he goes for the safety deposit box containing the diamonds, and kidnaps the mans brother, Thomas Babe Levy to torture for information. Repeating the words Is it safe? over and over, the sadistic dentist ruthlessly probes an open cavity in Babes mouth, before abandoning the dying nerve to drill into a healthy one, refusing to explain to the terrified man what the chilling refrain actually means. Its a horrendous scene, made even worse by the staged rescue midway through the torture, both Levy and the audience believing that hes been saved only to have the horror resume once more. Szells final comeuppance cant come soon enough for Babe or for us.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
