John Schlesinger’s captivating thriller starring Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier will be screened on a 35mm film from Russia’s State Film Fund collection.
After a series of mysterious events, a history PhD student finds himself embroiled in the world of international espionage. John Schlesinger’s spine-chilling thriller brings together two outstanding actors of different generations and acting schools. The portrayal of a Nazi criminal by the British theatre icon Laurence Olivier brought him an Oscar nomination, while the role of an unwilling hero “Babe” Levy became one of the most physically demanding in the career of Dustin Hoffman, known for his method acting.
Schlesinger’s second collaboration with Dustin Hoffman after the revolutionary drama about male sex workers Midnight Cowboy (1976), Marathon Man allowed Hoffman to play a new kind of hero: a clever and sneaky pacifist un-heroically nicknamed Babe. Throughout the film, Babe is saved not by his strength but by his brain and endurance. Hoffman created a character that represented the American youth after the Vietnam war, unexpectedly human and dignified—a perfect figure for the viewer to identify with.
In the chilly autumnal world of Marathon Man, where anyone could fall victim to a conspiracy, ghosts of the past return: McCarthyism, which had driven Babe’s father to suicide, and Nazism, which had taken away thousands of lives. The year Marathon Man came out, William Goldman, on whose novel of the same name the film is based, received an Oscar for his script to All the President's Men—another thriller starring Dustin Hoffman that reflects the era’s anxiety about the confrontation between the man and the power structure.
The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.
Marathon Man
Director: John Schlesinger
USA, 1976. 125 min. 18+