Marathon Man is a 1976 suspense/thriller film directed by John Schlesinger. It was adapted by William Goldman from his novel of the same name and stars Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane and Marthe Keller. The music score was composed by Michael Small.

Thomas Babington "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a history Ph.D. candidate and avid runner researching the same field as his father, who committed suicide after being investigated during the Joseph McCarthy era. Babe's brother, Henry (Roy Scheider), better known as "Doc", poses as an oil company executive but, unknown to Babe, is actually a U.S. government agent working for a secret agency headed by Director Peter Janeway (William Devane).

The brother of a Nazi war criminal possesses a safe deposit box key but is killed in a traffic accident. Doc suspects that the criminal, Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), will be arriving in New York to retrieve an extremely valuable diamond collection. Doc, who is often supposedly out of the country on business for extended periods of time, comes to New York under the guise of a visit to Babe. Meanwhile, Babe enters into a relationship with a young woman named Elsa Opel (Marthe Keller), who claims to be from Switzerland. The two are later mugged in a park by two men dressed in suits.

Marathon Man is a 1974 conspiracy thriller novel by William Goldman. It was Goldman's most successful thriller novel, and his second suspense novel.

In 1976 it was made into a film of the same name starring Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, and Roy Scheider and directed by John Schlesinger.

The former Nazi SS dentist at Auschwitz, Dr. Christian Szell (inspired by Josef Mengele, the last doctor in charge of Auschwitz II), now residing in Uruguay, must smuggle many diamonds out of the United States after the accidental death of his brother in New York City. This involves a secret intelligence agency named "The Division".

Meanwhile, at Columbia University, Thomas Babington "Babe" Levy (a reference to Thomas Babington) is a graduate student in history and an aspiring marathon runner. He is haunted by the suicide of his father, H.V. Levy, provoked by the activities of Senator McCarthy decades earlier, when he and his elder brother were boys. Unbeknownst to Babe, his brother works in Division.

Szell tortures Babe by drilling into his teeth, without anesthetic, and repeatedly asks the question, "Is it safe?" Babe does not know what the question means, nor the interrogator's identity. In the course of torturing him, Szell offers him the analgesic clove oil as inducement to cooperate.

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM ( /ˈlɒrəns ɵˈlɪvi.eɪ/; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor, director, and producer. One of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century, he was the youngest actor to be knighted and the first to be elevated to the peerage. He married three times, to actresses Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright. Actor Spencer Tracy said that Olivier was 'the greatest actor in the English-speaking world'.

Olivier played a wide variety of roles on stage and screen from Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to modern American and British drama. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. He is regarded by some to be the greatest actor of the 20th century, in the same category as David Garrick, Richard Burbage, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving in their own centuries. Olivier's AMPAS acknowledgments are considerable: twelve Oscar nominations, with two awards (for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet), plus two honorary awards including a statuette and certificate. He was also awarded five Emmy awards from the nine nominations he received. Additionally, he was a three-time Golden Globe and BAFTA winner.