The War Criminal Next Door

The film Marathon Man is one of the great paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, infamous for thescene in which the Nazi dentist played by Lawrence Olivier drills through Dustin Hoffman's teeth into his live nerve below, repeatedly asking "Is it safe?" This is the stuff of Hollywood horror films, but another scene is more plausible: Olivier -- whose character is loosely based on S.S. doctor Josef Mengele -- ventures into New York's diamond district, where he is recognized by Holocaust survivors. One elderly woman, slowly at first and then with increasing hysteria, begins shouting at passers-by to stop him before he escapes.