The ODESSA File

Although it deviates from the excellent book's plot, The Odessa File is, in my opinion, Jon Voight's best performance. A good script is handled very well by the actors. Like all Frederick Forsyth's books, the film conveys the possibility that all the events in the film were completely accurate to real events. The ending of the film, when we find out the reason for Jon Voight's character tracking down the former Nazi, is a superb moment of suspense.

This film is remarkable on many levels, but two stand out: 1) the realistic portrayal of the events in Riga, wherein thousands of Jews were massacred by the Nazis, and 2) the fact that the "butcher" of these events in the film was not a fictional ploy but an actual SS officer named, as in the film, Rosschmann. The latter point is of interest, since the film provoked a world wide hunt for this murderer, who was located in South America, and who then fled to Paraguay where he died in 1977. The first part of the film is near perfect, though it gets more melodramatic in the latter part, with a number of unconvincing dramatic events added. One example: the journalist(Voight)attacking the burly professional hit man sent to kill him, and then actually winning a hand to hand struggle with him.

This thriller should go down as a classic. It has a convincing story a rare thing in movies that try to blend historical fact and fiction. It's tense from beginning to end and doesn't have annoying red herrings or plot twists.

The casting is perfect. Maximillian Schell is ideal as the Nazi war criminal. Jon Voight is surprisingly convincing as a German accent and all. Good use of European supporting cast to avoid a fake feel.

Good on location feel to it. Liked the evocative score too.

It's one of the best thrillers about WWII subject matter even though it is set after the war.

Jon Voight does an excellent job in this intriguing film about a reporter searching for a war criminal who escaped Germany after World War II with the help of an organization called Odessa. His investigation leads him to Simon Wiesenthal and to a group of Israelis who train him to infiltrate Odessa. The historical setting is 1963 Germany, at the time of the Kennedy assassination This is a very suspenseful film with wonderful performances from the supporting cast as well: Mary Tamm, Maximillian Schell, Maria Schell, and Derek Jacoby.

For me, The Odessa File has always had an old-fashioned feeling to it -it was made in 1974, set in 1963, and almost seems like it could have been made in the '40s. Truly an excellent film.

As a bit of trivia no doubt already mentioned, Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the music for the film, which I frankly found rather intrusive.

Sometime between 1979 and today, filmmakers have lost the ability to tell a suspenseful story, to flesh out characters, so that today we see more style than substance, more gore and mayhem than plot development.

The Day of the Jackal, Marathon Man, Eye of the Needle, The Boys From Brazil and others will be labeled boring by many here because they must wait for something to happen. A typical example from Odessa is the reunion scene. Voight infiltrates the meeting of old German soldiers, make that old devoted Nazis, gathering in a beer hall. He snaps a photo of the speaker, shouting what sounds like the words of the pre-war Deutschland uber Alles. One man comes and begins his eviction from the hall. In the next scene we see him nursing his wounds, which are far more serious than the pushes we see. Tell me that today we would not witness a brutal beating punch by punch, kick by kick.

Films then used violence to advance the plot, such as the "Is it safe?" interrogation in Marathon Man. Seventies films are no shorter than today's masterpieces, but so much more intricate plot is compressed into their time frame.

Three Days of the Jackal is a perfect telling of a Forsyth book; we never become involved with the characters but watch in fascination. Here we follow Miller (Voight) giving us a horse in the race. I have reservations about the final confrontation with Schell and Miller's motivations but I have none about the story in general.

Only in the score does Odessa fall short; the music sounds almost if it was added as an afterthought and does nothing to enhance moods or foreshadow scenes. Worse, the score seems the beginning of a pattern that continues to this day where in some scenes the music is the main character. Only the bier-hall singing of the old Nazis sounds appropriate.

I rated the film 8 of 10.