Though his health was poor and, heaven knows, he didn’t need the money, the 20th century’s great classical actor just kept working throughout the 70s, ornamenting his Shakespearean resume with movie turns as Nazis and Nazi-hunters. This time he’s on Hitler’s side, playing an evil doctor who, in New York 30 years after the war, needs to extract a piece of information from an innocent grad student (Dustin Hoffman). Only one way to do that: painful dentistry. Olivier’s repeated question “Is it safe?”, posed as he places an instrument of torture in the strapped-down Hoffman’s mouth, became the decade’s catchphrase for pain.
