The Parallax View (1974)

Directed by Alan J. Pakula (All the President's Men, Sophie's Choice), this is an excellent, paranoid thriller and a benchmark for films of this type from the 1970s. Warren Beatty (Bonnie and Clyde) plays Joseph Frady, an arrogant investigative reporter who witnesses the assassination of a United States senator and then discovers that other reporters who were on the scene are dying under mysterious circumstances. With the help of his editor (Hume Cronyn), Frady goes underground to infiltrate the Parallax Corporation, which uses mind control to train assassins. And Frady might be the next one in line to take a fall. Featuring a classic brainwashing sequence and laced with intensity from start to finish, The Parallax View is essential viewing for fans of the political thriller genre. --Robert Lane Amazon.com essential video

Potential squandered by sloppy storytelling

This revered '70s paranoia thriller strikes me as a major disappointment. It starts out promisingly with an intriguing conspiracy plot, but director Alan J. Pakula is simply a lousy storyteller. His sense of pacing is terrible--scenes go on for far too long, often while we don't really understand what is happening in them, and then cut abruptly to something new. Parts of the film that are intended to be suspenseful register as dull and confusing. This does have its compensations; Pakula and the great DP Gordon Willis create some striking visual compositions, Warren Beatty does a nice job with his underwritten role, and the famous brainwashing montage is terrific. But the story is too incoherent to deliver the goods as a thriller, and the movie never recovers from Pakula's narrative indifference. April 16, 2008

Remains Topical

From the moment reporter Frady (Beatty) decides to investigate, he's caught in an anonymous web whose only face is that of the sinister Jack Younger (McGinn). How far does the web extend-- we can only guess. For Frady, it stretches from a tiny hamlet in the Pacific Northwest to a soaring glass monolith somewhere in urban America.

Probably no film captures the paranoid unease of the years between the JFK assassination and the Nixon resignation better than this one. Apprehension flowed like a dark undercurrent throughout the land. Something had happened in Dallas, Memphis, and LA's Ambassador Hotel, but no one could be sure what. And every night on TV screens, were the gathering horrors of Vietnam. It was like the country had suddenly woken up to a different America, one whose destiny was no longer in familiar hands. You didn't have to be a liberal or an activist to feel a gnawing sense of dislocation.

Frady's complascent little world of "third-rate" journalism, is also interrupted the moment his jilted lover Lee Carter (Prentiss) is wheeled into the autopsy room, dead by her own forecast. From then on it's a Kafkaesque pursuit of diabolical forces only dimly perceived. Conversations become muted. We hear only tantalizing bits and pieces, such as the senator aboard the flight to Denver.

Note how often telling scenes are filmed elliptically, either through glass panes, gauzy curtains, or at a distance, all of which impart not only a conspiratorial air, but a sense of viewer powerlessness much the way larger national events had suddenly escaped public grasp. This is not a movie to look away from for even a moment. The story is conveyed as much by camera as by dialogue, as when editor Rintels' (Hume Cronyn) lock-box disappears in a flash. Note also the expert use of silent intervals when characters such as Austin Tucker (William Daniels) simply stare off into space. Suddenly, events are thrown back on us to confront the tensions that have been mounting.

The sense of dislocation-- of things being not quite what they seem-- is pervasive, and is no better conveyed than in the justly celebrated test sequence. There stark images follow one another in rapid-fire succession like an on-rushing train. At first the images unfold logically after the title cards, pictures of mother, wife, etc. following upon the word "Love". But then the images begin to jumble-- love with hate, war with peace-- and the sense of normality begins to crumble, collapsing finally into a chaos of contradictions until a blond hero figure returns the associations to proper balance. Nonetheless, the world has been turned upside down, if only for a few moments, yet the impression of dislocation remains. It's a powerfully disturbing sequence.

The metaphor for what Frady faces lies in the massive slab of glass from whose bowels tiny figures emerge. It's a blank wall devoid of any identity of its own. Try to see inside and only an outside image is cast back. It's a giant mirror. Thus the public ends up seeing nothing beyond a reflection of itself. Yet the power of the shrouded interior is as undeniable as that gushing force of nature loosed upon the channel beneath the Salmon Creek dam.

Beatty underplays throughout, at times barely registering at all. But that's how it should be, since the story carries the film. It's really McGinn as the sinister Jack Younger who makes the impression. His voice and manner convey just the right edge, a subtle hint of concealed networks lurking in the background. The movie really turns on his performance, and he brings it off beautifully. My one complaint is the barroom brawl. It seems unduly melodramatic for a movie whose style appears deliberately understated.

Thirty years later and most Americans have only textbook knowledge of that explosive period and a world turned upside down. Parallax View may be a work of fiction, but it remains a telling insight into what much of the public was feeling. At movie's end, Frady rushes from the darkness toward the light of an open doorway only to be gunned down before he can reach the source. In 1978, the House Committee on Assassinations issued its findings. Contrary to the hurried Warren Report, the Committee found that JFK "was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy". But there was never any follow-up to that finding. It was as if committee members suddenly saw a light from an opening door but were unwilling to pass through. One doesn't have to agree to appreciate the historical or entertainment value of the movie. Parallax View remains a testament to its makers and to a period that in many ways is still with us.

My copy is a new tape which is fine. However, the movie has enough merit to look into an expanded DVD version if such is available. April 15, 2008

RELAX WITH PARALLAX ?

Another all but forgotten hit of the 1970's, beautifully photographed with a mature (but fantastic) script. Maverick reporter Beatty,along with hundreds of others,witnessed an assassination of a U.S. Senator 3 years earlier. Despite Official U.S. investigations to the contrary, people who were present at the shooting are dying pell-mell, and Beatty's out to investigate Parallax, much to the chagrin of his boss, Cronyn. Beatty is convinced that this organization trains "hit-men" to carry out "big-wig" murders,then covers them up with more murders.A movie not for ths faint of heart, it's also an indictment of pro- forma investigations that fail in their duty, and waste huge amounts of taxpayer money as well.By all means, see this movie which is really timeless in nature. March 9, 2008

Spare, dreamlike thriller

"The Parallax View" is a taut thriller about a reporter Joseph Frady (played by Warren Beatty) investigating a political assassination.

The film is strikingly shot - harsh lighting and sound, and harsh surfaces are used to highlight the increasing harshness of the story. The film almost takes on a dreamlike quality - and indeed given Frady's unbalanced past you could consider the film as a figment of his paranoic imagination.

Director Alan J. Pakula would reuse many of the techniques in his next (non-fictional) political film "All the President's Men".

This film certainly needs to be appreciated in its original 2.35:1 format as presented in this DVD. Sadly there are no extras. October 4, 2007

This review has been censored for your safety

I recall walking from the theater when this film was first released, determining that I would actively seek out every subsequent film the director Alan Pakula would make. From the understated fear generated from atop the Seattle Space Needle in the opening to the beautifully evocative shot of the investigatory panel (which still looks eerily like a burnished coffin to me before the camera dollies in slowly--the heads of the panel members morphing from ornamental coffin handles to authoritative stone-wallers), the show is a visual treat. Watch the propagandizing "recruitment" film at the film's centerpiece, and try not to think of Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" psychic realignment scene. Personally, I'm not a big Warren Beatty fan, but unquestionably I enjoyed his turn in this film as the man driven to uncover Truth, whatever the cost. Try this film backed up against Copolla's "The Conversation" for a great paranoid double-hitter. Then close out your evening with "Marathon Man" and you might start seeing secret signals in stop signs. May 10, 2007

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