USA,
1974, 127 min
Shown in 1974
CREDITS
- dir
-
Ronald Neame
- prod
-
John Woolf, John R. Sloan
- scr
-
Kenneth Ross, George Markstein
- cam
-
Ossie Morris
- editor
-
Ralph Kemplen
- mus
-
Andrew Lloyd Webber
- cast
-
Jon Voight, Maximilian Schell, Mary Tamm, Maria Schell, Derek Jacobi, Klaus Lowitch, Peter Jeffery, Kurt Meisel
- source
-
Columbia Pictures
- premiere
-
World Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Opening Night world premiere on 10/16/74; Ronald Neame attended. Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber! Two dozen Nazi Party members demonstrated outside the Palace of Fine Arts before screening.
OTHER
The Festival is proud to present the world premiere of Columbia Pictures’ The Odessa File, based on the suspense-filled novel by Frederick Forsyth which caught the imagination of millions of readers. Jon Voight stars as a journalist tracking down a mass murderer. During this search, he uncovers a terrifying organization dedicated to carrying out the orders of Adolf Hitler, 20 years after the dictator’s death. Maximilian Schell plays the journalist’s adversary, and Maria Schell makes a rare screen appearance as Voight’s mother. Under Ronald Neame’s direction, this intelligent thriller is both literate and gripping. As our Opening Night film, The Odessa File is an exciting and appropriate beginning for the 18th San Francisco International Film Festival.
FACTOID #130
Spike Lee has attended the San Francisco International several times. He came, film reels in hand, for the world premiere of She’s Gotta Have It in 1986. He returned in 1994 with Crooklyn, which starred Oakland’s own Delroy Lindo. And in 2007 he received the Festival’s Film Society Directing Award.
