In 1971, British journalist Frederick Forsyth scored spectacular success with The Day of the Jackal, a debut novel that introduced an effective mixture of extensively researched real events and thrilling fiction. The novel was adapted into an eponymous film in 1973, one of the best thrillers ever made. Forsyth’s second novel, The Odessa File, which used the same formula, was consequently adapted for the screen as well in a 1974 film directed by Ronald Neame.
The plot, just as in The Day of the Jackal, is set in 1963. The protagonist, played by Jon Voight, is Peter Miller, a young freelance reporter from the West German city of Hamburg, who is in desperate search of a big story and who, by accident, stumbles upon it on a day when the attention of the entire world seems to be consumed by the JFK assassination. An elderly Jewish man named Solomon Tauber has committed suicide, and Miller, after reading his diary, discovers that Tauber had been a prisoner at the Riga concentration camp during WW2, witnessing many atrocities committed by its sadistic commandant, SS Major Eduard Roschmann (played by Maximilian Schell). The old man had recognised his old tormentor, now a wanted war criminal, walking freely on the streets of Hamburg, but his efforts to alert the authorities proved fruitless. When Miller begins his own investigation, he soon finds out why this happened – the police, judiciary, and civil service in West Germany are infested with former members of the SS, many of them belonging to ODESSA, a secret organisation founded with the express purpose of helping Nazi war criminals escape justice. Miller’s life is soon in danger, but he nevertheless continues the pursuit of Roschmann and receives help from Israeli agents who see him as the perfect man to infiltrate ODESSA under an assumed identity.
Neame, a British director best known for the classic disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, directs The Odessa File in a slow but methodical style. This approach works best in the first part, when we are introduced to the characters and given hints about the protagonist’s motivation. This includes relatively long flashback scenes detailing life in the concentration camp and Roschmann’s atrocities, which are shot in black and white; they serve as an excellent form of exposition and explain why many young Germans like Miller felt the need to confront the ugly WW2 past while the older generations, unwilling to evoke unpleasant memories in the times of the post-war Economic Miracle, failed to do so. The script by Kenneth Ross, for the most part, tries to evade clichés – even when Miller’s character is given an obligatory romantic partner in the form of a stripper played by Mary Tamm, the villains very intelligently try to manipulate her instead of simply threatening her to give away the protagonist. The quality of the script is well-matched by the quality of the acting. Jon Voight, who would later describe the role of Miller as the hardest in his career, is very convincing, and that includes his accent, which is indistinguishable from the one used by the German actors in the film. Realism in the film is further enhanced by the use of real German locations.
Unfortunately, all that is compromised in the second half when Miller transforms from a determined but believable journalist into a not-so-convincing action hero. The action scenes in the film are overlong and not particularly believable, and the last one features too much melodrama. The script further “spices up” the plot by putting it in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which the old Nazis see as an opportunity to finish the Holocaust through missiles built for Nasser’s Egypt. A flavour of authenticity nevertheless remains, and this came from the original novel being heavily based on Forsyth’s cooperation with the famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, credited as the film’s advisor and who actually appears in the film as a character, played by Israeli actor Shmuel Rodensky. Wiesenthal, by his own account, saw both the novel and the film as an opportunity to catch the real-life Roschmann, who had been successfully hiding in Argentina at the time of the premiere. The publicity created by The Odessa File forced Argentine authorities to take action and Roschmann to flee to Paraguay, where he would shortly afterwards end his days. So, The Odessa File, despite having some flaws, is one of the rare thriller films that served an actual real-life purpose beyond mere entertainment.
RATING: 7/10 (++)
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