Fifty years later, one movie can still make an audience flinch at the whir of a dentist’s drill.
The 1976 thriller Marathon Man, turning 50 this year, has lost none of its power to terrify. Directed by John Schlesinger and adapted by William Goldman from his own novel, the film stars Dustin Hoffman as Thomas “Babe” Levy, a New York City graduate student and long-distance runner who gets yanked into a deadly web of Nazi war criminals, spies and smuggled diamonds after his secret-agent brother (Roy Scheider) is killed.
The Scene No One Forgets
At the center of it is Laurence Olivier as Christian Szell, a former Nazi dentist who robbed his Jewish patients, converted the loot into diamonds and resurfaces to collect. Certain that Babe knows where the gems are, Szell interrogates him the only way a dentist can, with a drill and no anesthetic, calmly repeating one question: “Is it safe?” The moment is so seared into pop culture that the line ranks No. 70 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest movie quotes.
The On-Set Legend
The shoot also produced one of Hollywood’s most repeated stories. As the legend goes, Hoffman stayed awake for days to look as wrecked as his character, and when Olivier asked why he looked so rough, the Shakespearean great reportedly replied, “Why don’t you just try acting?” Hoffman has since said the line was a friendly joke rather than a jab, but it became shorthand for the clash between Method acting and old-school craft.
Half a century on, Marathon Man still turns up on best thriller lists and still sends viewers straight for the floss. Not bad for a film that made a routine trip to the dentist into one of cinema’s great nightmares.
This story was originally published by Parade on Jun 15, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
