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Jon Voight narrowly misses a train in The Odessa File |
Director: Ronald Neame
Cast: Jon Voight (Peter Miller), Maximilian Schell (Eduard
Roschmann), Maria Schell (Frau Miller), Mary Tamm (Sigi), Noel Willman (Franz
Bayer), Derek Jacobi (Klaus Wenzer), Shmuel Rodensky (Simon Wiesenthal), Peter
Jeffrey (David Porath), Klaus Löwitsch (Gustav Mackensen), Kurt Meisel (Alfred
Oster), Günter Meisner (General Greifer)

The Odessa File is
an adaptation of Forsyth’s journalistic style thriller, exploring the shady
world of former Nazi war criminals, now hiding in new identities in positions
of influence throughout the German republic. Set in 1963, Peter Miller (Jon
Voight) is an idealistic young investigative journalist, who finds the diary of
a recently deceased Holocaust survivor. Horrified by the stories of the
Holocaust, Miller decides to hunt down the “Butcher of Riga” Eduard Roschmann (Maximilian
Schell playing a real war criminal), a renegade Nazi recently spotted alive by the writer shortly before his
death.
The Odessa File is
an episodic film that carefully follows Miller’s investigation, at first alone,
later as an undercover operative for Israeli intelligence. Each scene takes us
step-by-step closer towards the final target (Roschmann), which means each
scene introduces new characters and locations. The one consistent note we have
is Voight, who is pretty good as the driven, idealistic (and arrogant) Miller,
and he holds the film together rather well. Each of the tense set-ups works
well as a self-contained little story, although it does mean that the overall arc
of the film is less engaging than it should be. However, you are invested in
wanting the investigation to succeed.
This is partly because the black and white flashbacks to the
Holocaust are surprisingly effective from a film from the 1970s. Atrocities are
implied and sensitively shown, in an unsensational way, but remain very
affecting. Schell’s bombastic acting style also really works as a fanatical and
sadistic Nazi (it also works very well in the film’s final confrontation).
Combine this with the well-written, unembellished readings from the diary (good
work from Cyril Shaps as the voiceover artist) and the film very sensitively establishes
its anti-Nazi credentials early on.
Where it doesn’t really work is its whole Odessa plot. The
shadowy group of Nazis proves laughably easy to penetrate. The network is then
blown wide open seemingly within hours. There is a sub plot about the Nazis
supplying missiles to Nasser to fire at Israel which is totally unclear (it has
something to do with the factory Roschmann is now running). In fact, the whole
organisation’s structure is unclear and the film lacks a real face for its
antagonists. The film barrels along fast enough that you don’t notice it too
much when viewing it, but reflecting on it afterwards everything makes slightly
less sense, and the contrivances become far more glaring.
Other than Miller (whose motives the film is deliberately
obscure about) not many of the other characters get a look in. In particular
the female characters are little more than ciphers or “stop reading about the
Holocaust and come to bed” girlfriends. The Nazis are all pretty interchangeable,
although Noel Willman brings a nice sense of menace to a Nazi fixer. The strange
intermixing of real and imaginary characters (including Simon Wiesenthal) is
also a little odd.
But the story is exciting enough, and Voight’s earnest
performance makes you care about Miller enough, that you’ll enjoy watching it.
It’s not a classic like Day of the Jackal
(a perfect cinematic expression of Forsyth’s forward motion as a writer) but it’s
going to keep you entertained for a couple of hours.
SPOILERS AHEAD FROM
HERE!
I also think the final revelation of Miller’s motives is
bungled and undermines the anti-Nazi message. It turns out Miller is primarily
motivated by concluding Rorschmann murdered his father during the war. This
immediately trivialises the horrors of the Holocaust – yeah, it was bad, but
you can’t expect someone to go to all this trouble to hunt a bad man for that
alone can you? It’s a problem in the book as well, but at least there, more
weight is given to Miller’s anger at the war. Here he drops a few lines about
the evils of Nazism, but it never quite snaps together.
This is a good, decent, sharp thriller – but it has its
chances to be more than that, and it misses them.
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