- This article is about the film, not the book by Slavoj Žižek.
The Parallax View is a 1974 American thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Warren Beatty, who was also a producer. 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 one of a trilogy of thrillers directed by Pakula, along with Klute (1971) and All the President's Men (1976); The Parallax View was the only one not released by Warner Bros. Pictures.
Plot
TV newswoman Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss) is one of many witnesses to the public assassination of presidential candidate Senator Charles Carroll (Bill Joyce) in the restaurant of the Space Needle in Seattle. A waiter armed with a revolver is seen and chased from the restaurant onto the roof of the building from which he falls. Meanwhile, a second waiter, also armed with a gun, leaves the crime scene unnoticed; newspapers "officially" report the political killing as the work of a lone gunman.
Three years later Carter visits her former boyfriend and colleague, newspaper reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty), a talented crusading reporter with a reputation for drunkenness and professional irresponsibility, while Frady is working for a newspaper in Portland, Oregon. Lee tells Frady that she feels there is more to the killing than mere assassination - that six of the witnesses to Senator Carroll's assassination have died and she fears she will be next. She wonders why no one reported seeing anything differing from the official report.
Lee Carter dies soon afterwards and her death is judged by the police to be either a voluntary or accidental drug overdose. Frady investigates her leads and is led to the nearby town of Salmontail and its sheriff, L.D. Wicker (Kelly Thordsen), who turns out to be an operative of the Parallax Corporation. The sheriff attempts to trap Frady at a dam after an alarm has sounded indicating that it is opening (another assassination witness, Arthur Bridges, was killed the same way). Frady narrowly manages to escape but the sheriff drowns. Frady finds Parallax entrance exams in the sheriff's apartment and learns that Parallax Corporation's real business is finding, recruiting and training political assassins.
While interviewing Senator Carroll's former aide, Austin Tucker (William Daniels), aboard Tucker's boat, a bomb explodes (Tucker had been harboring the same fears as Lee Carter and had sought refuge on his sailboat). Tucker and his crewman/bodyguard are killed as Frady narrowly escapes and decides to apply to Parallax with an application rigged with a homicidal maniac's psychological evaluation. Jack Younger (Walter McGinn), a Parallax Corporation official, assures Frady that he is the kind of man they are interested in. Frady is accepted for training at the Parallax Corporation in Los Angeles where he is indoctrinated with a film that conflates positive images with negative actions. He later spies a Parallax man heading to a car and driving away. This is the same man Frady recalls from a picture of a waiter taken at the Space Needle the day of Senator Carroll's murder that was shown to him by Austin Tucker.
He follows the man to a parking lot and watches him take out a bag from another car's trunk then drive to an airport and check it in as baggage. Frady suspects it is a suitcase bomb and hurriedly boards the plane himself. He notices a Senator seated in the first class section but the Parallax bomber is not aboard. Frady quickly writes a bomb threat on a lavatory mirror with a bar of soap for the stewardess to find, but removes it after finding another passenger is waiting outside the lavatory door. He then writes a warning on a napkin which he is able to slip back into the stack of napkins on the drink service cart the stewardesses are using. The warning is found by a stewardess who reads it and nervously goes to the cockpit. The pilot then informs the passengers of technical difficulties and his intent to return to Los Angeles, where they land and are evacuated - just before the suitcase bomb explodes.
Frady's generally skeptical editor Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn) is listening to a secretly recorded tape of a conversation between Frady and Younger. Rintels' coffee and food, which have been drugged, are delivered to the news office by a Parallax operative posing as a delivery man. After locking up the tape and petty cash in his desk drawer, Rintels is shown eating and drinking. In the next scene Rintels is shown slumped in his chair. When police arrive, an officer says it looks like a simple death by heart attack. A moment later the desk drawer is shown to be unlocked and while the cash in there, the tape is not.
Continuing his investigation, Frady, who does not know that Rintels has been killed, 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 what the Parallax men (posing as security personnel), also in the rafters, are up to. Too late, Frady realizes he has been set up as the patsy or "fall guy" to follow them to the auditorium. Frady sees the politician killed then notices a planted rifle near him in the rafters. As the rehearsing people in the auditorium look for the gunman up in the rafters' catwalk, they see Frady lurking. He evades the initial search while attempting to escape from the murder site. He runs to a door open to the exterior but is shot dead by a low contrasted man with a shotgun, and framed posthumously for the murder of Senator Hammond.
An official assassination investigation committee, the same which determined the lone gunman killing of Senator Carroll, officially reports that newspaper reporter Joe Frady was the lone gun assassin of Senator Hammond. The committee states for the official record that Frady was obsessed with Carroll assassination conspiracy theories which led him to kill Senator Hammond, believing he was responsible. The committee further state their hope 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.
Production
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, and Pope John XXIII. 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)
Reaction
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]
See also
References
- ^ Ebert, Roger (June 14, 1974). "The Parallax View". Chicago Sun-Times. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19740614/REVIEWS/811039998/1023. Retrieved 2009-10-01.
- ^ Canby, Vincent (June 20, 1974). "The Parallax View". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=1&res=EE05E7DF173DA62CA34A4CC6B679988C6896&partner=Rotten%20Tomatoes. Retrieved 2009-10-01.
- ^ Schickel, Richard (July 8, 1974). "Paranoid Thriller". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943929,00.html. Retrieved 2009-10-01.
- ^ Nashawaty, Chris (July 11, 2006). "View Master". Entertainment Weekly. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1212630,00.html. Retrieved 2009-10-01.
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