The Odessa File movie storyline. In 1963, freelance journalist Peter Miller is given the diary of an old man, Solomon Tauber, who had recently committed suicide. The diary deals with Tauber’s incarceration at the Riga concentration camp. Miller becomes quite interested in the camp’s commander, Eduard Roschmann, who he learns vanished after the end of the war.
The Odessa FileHis enquiries with the police are not well received and he is warned to be careful, something he takes quite seriously after someone tries to kill him by pushing him in front of a moving train. He learns there is an organization known by the acronym “O.D.E.S.S.A.”, which assists former members of the S.S. to obtain new identities and evade the authorities.
The secret organization has infiltrated all levels of German society and will apparently stop at nothing to protect its members. Israeli intelligence is also keen on infiltrating O.D.E.S.S.A. and satisfied that Miller isn’t an impostor, assist him in going undercover as a former S.S. camp guard needing assistance. Miller is soon found out by those who run the organization, but he manages to locate Roschman nonetheless. Miller, it turns out, has his own personal reasons for having wanted to find him.
The Odessa File is an 1974 thriller film, adapted from the 1972 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.
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.
About the Story
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.
The Odessa File (1974)
Directed by: Ronald Neame
Starring: Jon Voight, Mary Tamm, Maximilian Schell, Maria Schell, Derek Jacobi, Peter Jeffrey, Klaus Löwitsch, Kurt Meisel, Hannes Messemer, Garfield Morgan, Shmuel Rodensky, Ernst Schröder
Screenplay by: Kenneth Ross, George Markstein
Production Design by: Rolf Zehetbauer
Cinematography by: Oswald Morris
Film Editing by: Ralph Kemplen
Makeup Department: Susi Krause, Raimund Stangl
Music by: Andrew Lloyd Webber
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: October 18, 1974
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