20 Most Perfect Scenes In Cinema History
7. Marathon Man (1976) - Is It Safe?
No, it bloody isn’t.
John Schlesinger’s harrowing thriller, filmed from William Goldman’s adaptation of his own 1974 novel, is a one of a kind movie. For decades, filmmakers have been trying, and mostly failing, to recapture its brooding menace.
Where they usually fall down is in attempting to keep their innocent protagonist both whole and heroic, sticking to the usual Hollywood received wisdom that audiences will not root for a protagonist who falls to pieces in the face of adversity. Goldman and Schlesinger, however, had no interest in sparing ‘Babe’ Levy (Dustin Hoffman) any of the anguish he suffers.
The guileless brother of a spy murdered by Szell (Laurence Olivier), a Nazi war criminal desperate to escape New York with the diamonds he stole during the war, Babe is kidnapped in the second act and tortured through dentistry in one of modern cinema’s most memorable - and memorably nasty - scenes.
What makes this truly horrible - aside from the fact that we know that Babe is completely ignorant of Szell and his diamonds, and can’t tell his captor a thing - is that Szell breaks him.
There’s no heroic standing up under pressure, no Bond-style laughing in the face of torment. Although he lives to confront his enemy and see him fall, Babe is ruined by his experience, damaged beyond repair.