The Parallax View

FInally the way it was supposed to be seen...
Beatty plays journalist investigating mysterious deaths of witnesses to a political assassination.

Pakula's dark and paranoid masterpiece was origninally shot by Gordon Willis (Godfathers I II and III, Klute, Zeilig, etc.) in 2.35 aspect. Willis, a master of light and composition, developed frames for this film that are practically abstract. His sense of composition (I'm sure Pakula was part of this) is brilliant: the static formalistic compositions; the use of long lenses to flatten each image into an (almost) isometric projection.

Now, maybe I'm getting carried away here, but "parallax" and "isometric"...? Hmmm... Both are terms related to geometry the "perception" of reality -- which is more-or-less the subtext of this film.

Anyway, after its dissapearance from theater screens this film made numerous appearances on TV (mainly late at night) in a pan-and-scan version. Same with the VHS version. So until the DVD was released, this was the only...

The Hero's Journey To Fool
Reminds me very much of THE WICKER MAN (released that same year of '74) in that both films chart the nightmarish progress of men who are seeking to uncover a mystery and right a great wrong, who must plunge into disorienting environments where none of the rules they adhered to back in the 'normal world' apply; they can't get their footing, and quickly become controlled by events. By the time they realize their every step has been not just watched but directed from the beginning...it's too late.

Warren Beatty's Joe Frady, a minor reporter in the Northwest, begins investigating the deaths of witnesses to a political assassination he'd covered three years before. He stumbles upon literature from The Parallax Corporation, an outfit he comes to believe are clandestinely recruiting & training assassins; he decides to penetrate the group as a 'job applicant', armed with a mass-murderer's psych-test responses and a false identity. He has made a slight but fatal error in judgment, however,...

The paradigm for paranoia
The Parallax View is the ultimate paranoia film, bar none. It is the standard by which all other films of this genre are judged. In other words, it is a classic. It combines stellar direction with a very believable performance by Warren Beatty to create a film that has no equal. From the opening on the Space Needle, it is obvious this movie isn't going to be run of the mill. From there, every plot line just gets bigger and bigger, until everything envelops Warren Beatty to form the film's stunning conclusion. Alan Pakula would eventually follow this film up with All The Presidents Men, that film is good, but this film is great. It stands as his masterwork, and it is the best of the 70's paranoia pictures.

Click to Editorial Reviews