The Odessa File (film)

The Odessa File
Film poster by Bill Gold Illustration by Howard Terpning
Directed by	Ronald Neame
Screenplay by	Kenneth Ross George Markstein
Based on	The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth
Produced by	John Woolf John R. Sloan
Starring	Jon Voight Mary Tamm Maximilian Schell Maria Schell
Cinematography	Oswald Morris
Edited by	Ralph Kemplen
Music by	Andrew Lloyd Webber
Production companies	John Woolf Productions Domino Productions Oceanic Filmproduktion
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	18 October 1974 (1974-10-18)
Running time	128 minutes
Countries	United Kingdom West Germany
Language	English
Box office	$6 million (North American rentals)

The Odessa File is an 1974 espionage thriller film, adapted from the novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth, about a reporter's investigation of a neo-Nazi political-industrial network in post-Second World War West Germany. The film stars Jon Voight, Mary Tamm, Maximilian Schell and Maria Schell and was directed by Ronald Neame, with a score by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was the only film that the Schell siblings made together.

Plot

On 22 November 1963, the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination in Dallas, Peter Miller, a young freelance reporter in Hamburg, West Germany, pulls his car over to the curb to listen to a radio report of the event. As a result, he happens to be stopped at a traffic signal as an ambulance passes by on a highway.

He follows the ambulance and discovers it is en route to pick up the body of an elderly Jewish Holocaust survivor who had committed suicide, leaving behind no family. The reporter obtains the diary of the man, which contains information on his life in the Riga Ghetto during WW II, including the name of the SS officer who ran the camp, Eduard Roschmann.

Determined to hunt Roschmann down, Miller consults with Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal who informs him about ODESSA, a secret organization for former members of the SS. With this information, and the help of Israeli secret agents based in Germany, Miller then dares to go undercover, using an assumed name and forged papers showing him as an SS veteran. He joins and infiltrates the ODESSA and finds Roschmann, who now runs a high-tech company which plans to send radio gyroscopes and biochemical warheads to Egypt to use against Israel.

Miller eventually finds Roschmann at his home and confronts him at gunpoint, revealing that the diary included a passage about Roschmann murdering a fellow German officer during the war, the unique details of which confirm that it was Miller’s father. Miller intends to hand Roschmann to the authorities, but kills him when the Nazi shoots him. The detailed ODESSA files obtained by Miller are used to arrest numerous Nazi war criminals, and Roschmann’s factory mysteriously burns to the ground before any rockets are delivered to Egypt.

Cast

• Jon Voight as Peter Miller
• Mary Tamm as Sigi
• Maximilian Schell as Eduard Roschmann
• Maria Schell as Frau Miller
• Derek Jacobi as Klaus Wenzer
• Peter Jeffrey as David Porath
• Klaus Löwitsch as Gustav Mackensen
• Kurt Meisel as Alfred Oster
• Hannes Messemer as General Glücks
• Garfield Morgan as Israeli General
• Shmuel Rodensky as Simon Wiesenthal
• Ernst Schröder as Werner Deilman
• Günter Strack as Kunik
• Noel Willman as Franz Bayer

Production

Filming was done on location in Hamburg, Germany; Salzburg, Austria; Heidelberg, Germany; Munich, Germany; at Pinewood Studios, England; and the Bavaria studios in Grünwald, Bavaria, Germany. It was filmed with Panavision equipment, produced with Eastmancolor technologies.

The film's title song, "Christmas Dream", is sung by Perry Como and the London Boy Singers.

Reception

Nora Sayre of the New York Times said, "The film makes its points methodically, almost academically. It also drags because there are many unnecessary transitional passages, devoted to moving the characters from one situation to another. Almost every occurrence is predictable."

External links

• The Odessa File at IMDb
• The Odessa File at AllMovie
• The Odessa File at the TCM Movie Database
• The Odessa File at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• The Odessa File at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Odessa File in libraries (WorldCat catalog)