| The Parallax View | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Alan J. Pakula |
| Produced by | Alan J. Pakula |
| Screenplay by | David Giler Lorenzo Semple Jr Uncredited: Robert Towne |
| Based on | novel by Loren Singer |
| Starring | Warren Beatty Paula Prentiss Hume Cronyn William Daniels Anthony Zerbe |
| Music by | Michael Small |
| Cinematography | Gordon Willis |
| Editing by | John W. Wheeler |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 14, 1974 |
| Running time | 102 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Parallax View is a 1974 American thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Warren Beatty, Paula Prentiss, Hume Cronyn and William Daniels. The film was adapted by David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr and an uncredited Robert Towne from the 1970 novel by Loren Singer. The story concerns a reporter's dangerous investigation into an obscure organization, the Parallax Corporation, whose primary, but not ostensible, enterprise is political assassination.
The Parallax View is the second installment of Pakula's Political Paranoia trilogy, along with Klute (1971) and All the President's Men (1976); The Parallax View was the only one not released by Warner Bros. Pictures.
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TV newswoman Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss) is one of many witnesses to the public assassination of presidential candidate Senator Charles Carroll (Bill Joyce) atop the Seattle Space Needle. A waiter armed with a revolver is chased but falls to his death. Meanwhile, a second waiter, also armed with a gun, leaves the crime scene unnoticed. A special committee decides that the assassination was the work of a lone gunman.
Three years later, Carter visits her former boyfriend and colleague, newspaper reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty), in Portland, Oregon. Lee tells Frady that she feels there is more to the killing - that six of the witnesses to Carroll's assassination have died and she fears she will be next. Frady does not take her seriously. Not long afterwards, Lee is found dead and her death is judged by the police to be either a voluntary or accidental drug overdose.
Investigating Carter's leads, Frady goes to the small town of Salmontail whose sheriff, L.D. Wicker (Kelly Thordsen), attempts to trap him below a dam after an alarm has sounded indicating that the floodgates are opening. Frady manages to narrowly escape but the sheriff drowns. Frady finds information on the Parallax Corporation in the sheriff's apartment and learns that its real business is recruiting political assassins.
While interviewing Carroll's former aide, Austin Tucker (William Daniels), aboard Tucker's boat, a bomb explodes. Frady survives but is believed dead, and decides to apply to Parallax under an assumed identity. Jack Younger (Walter McGinn), a Parallax official, assures Frady that he is the kind of man they are interested in. Frady is accepted for training in Los Angeles where he watches a slide show that conflates positive images with negative actions.
Frady later spies a Parallax man he recalls from a picture of a waiter taken the day Senator Carroll was murdered. He follows the man and watches him take out a bag from another car's trunk, then drive to an airport and check it as baggage on a plane. Frady boards the plane himself. He notices a Senator aboard, but not the Parallax man. Frady writes a warning on a napkin which he slips into the drink service cart. The warning is found and the plane returns to Los Angeles. Everybody is evacuated - just before a bomb explodes.
Frady's generally skeptical editor Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn) listens to a secretly recorded tape of a conversation Frady had. A disguised Parallax operative delivers coffee and food to Rintels' news office. The editor is poisoned and the tape is removed.
Continuing his investigation, Frady follows the Parallax assassins to the dress rehearsal for a political rally for Senator George Hammond (Jim Davis). Frady hides in the auditorium's rafters to secretly observe the Parallax men, posing as security personnel, also in the rafters. Too late, Frady realizes he has been set up as a "patsy" or "fall guy", as Hammond is shot dead by an unseen gunman. As Frady is trying to escape, he is sighted in the rafters by the marching band's tuba player, and a Parallax agent kills Frady with a shotgun.
An official assassination investigation committee, the same which determined a lone gunman killed Senator Carroll, officially reports that newspaper reporter Joe Frady was the lone assassin of Senator Hammond. The committee further state their hope that the verdict will end political assassination conspiracy theories and that they will publish more information in the future. They do not take questions from the press.
Most of the images used in the montage were of anonymous figures or patriotic backgrounds, with occasional historical individuals such as Richard Nixon, Adolf Hitler, Pope John XXIII, and, notably for the film's subject matter, Lee Harvey Oswald in the picture taken moments after his shooting. The montage also uses a drawing by Jack Kirby of the Marvel Comics character Thor. The drawing is a cropped image from the cover of Thor Annual #4 (December 1971). The montage also includes a cropped image from the cover of Thor #135 (December 1966) featuring a creature known as the Man Beast.
The distinctive anamorphic photography with long lens, unconventional framing, and shallow focus were supervised by Gordon Willis.
The river scene was filmed at the Gorge Dam, on the Skagit River (Ross Lake National Recreation Area) in Washington State. (48 41' 51" N, 121 12' 29" W)
The Space Needle in Seattle is seen extensively in the first assassination sequence.
At the time of its release, The Parallax View received mixed reactions from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "The Parallax View will no doubt remind some reviewers of Executive Action (1973), another movie released at about the same time that advanced a conspiracy theory of assassination. It's a better use of similar material, however, because it tries to entertain instead of staying behind to argue".[1] In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "Neither Mr. Pakula nor his screenwriters, David Giler and Lorenzo Semple, Jr., display the wit that Alfred Hitchcock might have used to give the tale importance transcending immediate plausibility. The moviemakers have, instead, treated their central idea so soberly that they sabotage credulity".[2] Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "We would probably be better off rethinking—or better yet, not thinking about—the whole dismal business, if only to put an end to ugly and dramatically unsatisfying products like The Parallax View".[3] In 2006, Entertainment Weekly critic Chris Nashawaty wrote, "The Parallax View is a mother of a thriller.... And Beatty, always an underrated actor thanks (or no thanks) to his off-screen rep as a Hollywood lothario, gives a hell of a performance in a career that's been full of them".[4] The motion picture won the Critics Award at the Avoriaz Film Festival (France) and was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe award for Best Picture. Gordon Willis won the Best Cinematography award from the National Society of Film Critics (USA).
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