The Parallax ViewThe secret to a successful conspiracy is making sure no one thinks that it is one. The Parallax View is a political thriller about a reporter named Joe Frady (Warren Beatty), who begins peeling away the layers of deception and intrigue surrounding a political assassination, after his erstwhile girlfriend and witness to the killing, Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), turns up dead in an apparent accident like the others she warned him about. Joe applies his investigative experience to seeking out the answers to a puzzle so shadowy and insidious, he might just be another pawn in it and not even know.
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The Parallax View was released in 1974, and was prime material for movie going audiences still reeling with suspicion of government conspiracies. The film was one of many to try its hand at this, including later ones like All the President's Men and Three Days of the Condor. It is the story of an independent political candidate named Charles Carroll (William Joyce) who is publicly assassinated, and what happened in the aftermath a few years later as several of the witnesses start dying off, apparently by unfortunate circumstances. Lee pleas to Joe to help her, but the indifferent and even bitter Joe dismisses her claims as mere paranoia. The prologue of The Parallax View includes a few key details that frame the conspiracy for the audience, even if the "witnesses" failed to notice them. Most notably is that the perceived assassin wasn't the real killer; it was actually a "second gunman" (Bill McKinney), who escapes from the Space Needle unnoticed, leaving the case to be neatly wrapped up by an investigative committee months later and forgotten by the public at large. Since that time, it appears that Joe and Lee's lives have fallen off the rails. Joe uses morally questionable tactics to obtain a story--like infiltrating a house on the verge of a drug bust, which gets him arrested, much to the chagrin of his boss, Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn). After Lee's death, Joe tries to encourage Bill to let him take on this story, but Joe has spent too much of his good faith already pursuing "hot leads", leaving Joe on his own and relying on a mere sliver of a clue to put him on the path. His adventure is a series of loosely connected events, as he tries to untangle the knot of what really happened to the other witnesses. He goes to a small town called Salmontail, where he butts heads (literally) with the local constabulary. And after he discovers that he's fallen into a trap, he has no choice but to sink or swim, and push even further along his line of inquiry--not just to avenge Lee but to save his own skin now.
The Parallax View was adapted for the screen by Alan J. Pakula from the novel of the same name by Loren Singer. The paranoia-ridden plot mostly hinges on Joe being ill-equipped to confront the depth of the conspiracy he is investigating. Joe also isn't an investigative genius; his typical move is to adopt an alias, and invariably, these fall apart on him time and again. To his credit, though, after he absconds with a secret file referencing a mysterious group called the Parallax Corporation, he consults with aberrant psychology expert, Prof. Nelson Schwartzkopf (Anthony Zerbe), and discovers that this group is likely cultivating psychopaths to become political assassins, à la The Manchurian Candidate or the later Conspiracy Theory. (The film also has a brainwashing montage that seems hellbent on outdoing the Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange.) Unsurprisingly (and recklessly), Joe provides this mysterious organization with doctored answers to make him look like a candidate for recruitment, which is just what happens when Jack Younger (Walter McGinn) comes knocking on his door, and prepares to make him an "offer". But despite Joe's earnest attempts to discover what secrets lurk within Parallax, he lacks the skill to cover his tracks as well as his opponents, invariably resulting in practically everyone he is close to getting targeted because of his ineptitude. Joe is essentially a patsy from the start, put on the rails from the moment Lee comes to warn him and ask for his help--he makes a bad call here, too. It's a rare--even dour--thriller where the protagonist is consistently outmatched by the better funded, sneakier, and morally void syndicate that he's trying to unmask. Joe isn't even a terribly remarkable "hero". His past is only casually alluded to by Bill, who mentions a drinking problem. There is also an arrogance in the way that Joe approaches journalism, which Bill intimates comes from his desire to only take on the "exciting" stories. Joe ultimately gets set up in a way that bookends the film's prologue, and forces the audience to reconsider what they thought they saw or what was really happening when Carroll was killed because of what happens to Joe in turn. Appropriately, The Parallax View draws upon aspects of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the myriad theories about "grassy knolls" and "cover ups" that followed. And the film raises this specter of dread to exploit that lingering anxiety in Americans--that deep down, whatever semblance of trust we may have had for our leaders and those in charge has long since gone up in smoke.
Recommended for: Fans of an early paranoia-driven political thriller that, while often unfocused and predictable by today's standards, toys with audience expectations about both its protagonist's effectiveness as an investigator and the depth of the conspiracy in which he becomes a part. The Parallax View is best, er, viewed, as an encapsulation of the political paranoia about assassinations and government cover ups that were a part of the American zeitgeist in the era in which it was released.
The Parallax View was adapted for the screen by Alan J. Pakula from the novel of the same name by Loren Singer. The paranoia-ridden plot mostly hinges on Joe being ill-equipped to confront the depth of the conspiracy he is investigating. Joe also isn't an investigative genius; his typical move is to adopt an alias, and invariably, these fall apart on him time and again. To his credit, though, after he absconds with a secret file referencing a mysterious group called the Parallax Corporation, he consults with aberrant psychology expert, Prof. Nelson Schwartzkopf (Anthony Zerbe), and discovers that this group is likely cultivating psychopaths to become political assassins, à la The Manchurian Candidate or the later Conspiracy Theory. (The film also has a brainwashing montage that seems hellbent on outdoing the Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange.) Unsurprisingly (and recklessly), Joe provides this mysterious organization with doctored answers to make him look like a candidate for recruitment, which is just what happens when Jack Younger (Walter McGinn) comes knocking on his door, and prepares to make him an "offer". But despite Joe's earnest attempts to discover what secrets lurk within Parallax, he lacks the skill to cover his tracks as well as his opponents, invariably resulting in practically everyone he is close to getting targeted because of his ineptitude. Joe is essentially a patsy from the start, put on the rails from the moment Lee comes to warn him and ask for his help--he makes a bad call here, too. It's a rare--even dour--thriller where the protagonist is consistently outmatched by the better funded, sneakier, and morally void syndicate that he's trying to unmask. Joe isn't even a terribly remarkable "hero". His past is only casually alluded to by Bill, who mentions a drinking problem. There is also an arrogance in the way that Joe approaches journalism, which Bill intimates comes from his desire to only take on the "exciting" stories. Joe ultimately gets set up in a way that bookends the film's prologue, and forces the audience to reconsider what they thought they saw or what was really happening when Carroll was killed because of what happens to Joe in turn. Appropriately, The Parallax View draws upon aspects of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the myriad theories about "grassy knolls" and "cover ups" that followed. And the film raises this specter of dread to exploit that lingering anxiety in Americans--that deep down, whatever semblance of trust we may have had for our leaders and those in charge has long since gone up in smoke.
Recommended for: Fans of an early paranoia-driven political thriller that, while often unfocused and predictable by today's standards, toys with audience expectations about both its protagonist's effectiveness as an investigator and the depth of the conspiracy in which he becomes a part. The Parallax View is best, er, viewed, as an encapsulation of the political paranoia about assassinations and government cover ups that were a part of the American zeitgeist in the era in which it was released.