The Story: WebMD says: "It's commonly said that you should see a dentist twice a year. When in doubt, this is a good rule of thumb to follow."
This, of course, depends on your own oral health, as your tooth-mileage may vary.
And now, the counter-argument. If your dentist's name is Szell and his activity between 1937 and 1945 is a little "sketchy"...I'd look for somebody else as your PCP.
This "scene"...from 1976's thriller Marathon Man...is just torture. Pure and simple, but written by William Goldman (as he usually did) with a perverse twinkle in the eye.
Laurence Olivier—in one of the many "teutonic" roles he did in his last years (this film, Dracula, The Boys from Brazil, A Little Romance)—plays Dr. Christian Szell (inspired by Nazi crack-pot Joseph Mengele—Mengele was nicknamed "The Angel of Death" whereas Goldman dubbed Szell "der weiße Engel" or "The White Angel"). Laurence Olivier was in poor health at the time of production—he was doing these movies for the money and as a legacy for when he died—and if Olivier couldn't do it, Richard Widmark would have taken the role.
As good as I think Widmark would have been, there is something special the way England's Great Shakespearean plays it—very understated, very precise, efficient, no wasted movements (a stark contrast to the panicky peripatetic Hoffman).
And he makes a feast of the very-much-repeated "Is it safe?" line. Every reading is different, with just a slightly changed intonation. It's not merely emphasizing one word each time ("IS it safe?" "Is IT safe?" "Is it SAFE?"), it's subtly bending the words to provoke a response, as if Hoffman's "Babe" IS actually giving him information (when he doesn't have a clue what he's asking about, although Szell insists on asking as though he does). He never raises his voice, is always a professional dentist in his torture-chair-side manner, even reassuringly cooing a bit (It's okay") as he drills...and digs...for information.
Yeah, the part was beneath him. But, he made the part better just by treating it with enough respect to scare the spit out of you.
The Set-up: Thomas "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman), graduate student, is an innocent in a bad situation. But, "Babe" will tell you, even innocent men can be ground up in the gears of events. His brother (Roy Scheider) has just been killed under mysterious circumstances. And now, "Babe" has been kidnapped and brought to one of those "secure" locations, where he feels anything but secure. And he is about to meet one of those most brutal butchers in history, Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier)
Action.
Dr. CHRISTIAN SZELL: Is it safe? -
Dr. SZELL: Is it safe? -
Dr. SZELL: Is it safe? -
"BABE" LEVY: No, it's not safe. It's very dangerous. Be careful.
Dr. SZELL: That hurt?
"BABE" LEVY: uh-huh?
Dr. SZELL: I should think it would. 
Dr. SZELL: You should take better care of your teeth. 
Dr. SZELL: You have quite a cavity here. -
ERHARDT: Think he knows? -
Words by William Goldman
Pictures by Conrad L. Hall and John Schlesinger
Marathon Man is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Paramount Home Video.
* A little look behind the blog-curtain about an interesting thing. You know those frames where "Babe" gets his cavity jammed and he screams? Notice a difference between the color, texture, and fidelity of those images?
Okay. I used a DVD obtained from the library to capture these images. It's been checked out and played many times I'm sure (the manufacture copyright date of the DVD is 2001). But, at that point in the sequence, the DVD skipped, past that particular moment to the shot of Erhardt turning away, forcing me to use a YouTube version of that scream for that one frame.
Now, why did the DVD skip? At that particular part? Because it was paused and played over and over again to watch that scene. Somebody did. Maybe somebodies. Weird what people are into.
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