Marathon Man is one of my all-time favourite thrillers.

It was directed by John Schlesinger and written by William Goldman, who also wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, amongst other classics, as well as authoring the classic Hollywood memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade (a must-read for any movie fan). He initially wrote Marathon Man as a novel, and in some ways the book is even better. (There is one great twist which is delayed in the novel vs the movie and completely foxed me when I read it). 

If you are not familiar, the film revolves around Dustin Hoffman as the titular character, who comes into conflict with and is tortured by a thoroughly evil Nazi dentist played by Laurence Olivier –  one of the all-time great movie villains IMHO. There is a classic scene where Olivier repeats the question “is it safe?” ad nauseam while calmly drilling through Hoffman’s teeth, that may well put you off sitting in a dentist’s chair for life.

For such a great film, the poster is somewhat underwhelming, although I do rather like the very minimalist and super-confident tag-line: “A Thriller”. The same stark black and white image of Hoffman with a gun was used in pretty much all markets – this is the French ‘petit’ poster version.