Movies - The Parallax View

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	Movies - The Parallax View

The Parallax View is a 1974 movie directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Warren Beatty (who was also a producer), adapted from the novel by Loren Singer. The movie is a dark, paranoid, political thriller about a reporter's investigation into an obscure and murderous organization, the Parallax Corporation.

The movie can be seen as part of a trilogy of paranoid political thrillers directed by Pakula, along with Klute
(1971) and All the President's Men
(1976). There are very clear parallels to the Kennedy assassination and its conspiracy theories running through the movie.

Plot

Beatty portrays reporter Joe Frady. A colleague and former lover of his, Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), is present at the assassination of a U.S. Senator and Presidential hopeful at the Seattle Space Needle. The assassin dies just after his target and the whole assassination is officially reported as the work of a single individual. Carter feels there is more to the killing and her idea seems justified when seven of the witnesses to the death also die.

Frady follows up her investigation after she herself turns up dead (ostensibly of an overdose) and he finds the conspiracy leads to the Parallax Corporation. The corporation offers itself as a therapy institute. Frady believes Parallax detects certain types of personalities and recruits them as sociopaths capable of amoral assignments, such as political assassinations. He fakes a psychological test and is accepted for the Parallax therapy but finds himself seriously outclassed and isolated by the subtle and invasive corporation. He can sense the fate the corporation intends for him but cannot avoid it.

There is a memorable sequence when Frady is bombarded with a montage of emotional images, words and music, the links between the words and images shifting as the sequence progresses and speeds up. The montage is filmed in a subjective manner. Frady and his reactions are not shown - the montage is projected at the audience. Such montages were popular in the film schools of the 1970s and can be seen in other contemporary films.

The action culminates when Frady, continuing his investigation, tails (he believes covertly) Parallax conspirators to a dress rehearsal of a political rally for another U.S. Senator. Frady hides in the catwalks of the auditorium trying to secretly observe what the men, who are also walking around the catwalks, are up to. Too late, Frady realizes he's been set up. Having Frady follow them to this specific location was actually what they intended all along. As Frady discovers he's trapped, the senator is shot and killed. Frady then notices a rifle that's been planted at his location. As those on the auditorium floor look up to the catwalks for the gunman, they see Frady moving about. He tries to hide and evades the initial search for him. But before he can escape the building, he's discovered and shot to death.

Parallax has set him up perfectly. He is spotted hiding among the catwalks and there is a rifle right where he was. Thus, it is entirely believable to the observers that he was the assassin. And indeed, in the final scene, the same committee who determined that the assassination of the senator in the beginning was the work of just one individual announces that the assassination at the end was also the work of just one individual - Joe Frady.

The distinctive panavision (2:35) photography with long lens, unconventional framing and shallow focus was supervised by Gordon Willis.

Trivia

The above-mentioned montage film sequence was imitated in the music video for the Billy Joel song, "Pressure."

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