The Parallax View [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Alan J. Pakula Alan J. Pakula

Overview

Based on a novel by Loren Singer, The Parallax View could well have been titled The Parallel View, inasmuch as the events in the film are obviously intended to parallel the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Warren Beatty plays a Seattle TV reporter who is approached by a terrified Paula Prentiss. She had been an eyewitness to a political assassination several years earlier; since that time, all the other witnesses have died mysteriously. Though the story is not considered "hot" by editor Hume Cronyn--the so-called "lone assassin" was himself killed by the police, and the case was closed--Beatty insists upon investigating. The key to the mystery is the monolithic Parallax Corporation. As Beatty snoops about, several attempts are made on his on his life. It turns out that there was more than one gunman at that long-ago political assassination, and that Parallax had a vested interest in the elimination of the victim. When Beatty is on the verge of uncovering the truth, he becomes as much a dupe as that unfortunate "lone" assassin. After this shakedown course in fictional political paranoia, director Alan J. Pakula was ready for the real-life conspiracies re-enacted in his 1976 film All the President's Men.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/09/2021
UPC:	0715515254915
Original Release:	1974
Rating:	R
Source:	Criterion Collection
Language:	English
Time:	1:42:00
Sales rank:	8,796

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Warren Beatty	Joseph Frady
Paula Prentiss	Lee Carter
William Daniels	Austin Tucker
Walter McGinn	Jack
Hume Cronyn	L'éditeur Rintels
Kelly Thordsen	Sheriff L.D.
Earl Hindman	Deputy Red
Chuck Waters	Busboy/Assassin
Bill Joyce	Sen. Carroll,le sénateur Carroll
Bettie Johnson	Mrs. Carroll
Bill McKinney	Art, an Assassin
Joanne Harris	Chrissy,Chrissy
Ted Gehring	Schecter
Lee Pulford	Shirley
Doria Cook	Gale
Joan Lemmo	Organist
Anthony Zerbe	Schwartzkopf
Kenneth Mars	Former FBI Agent Turner
Stacy Keach Sr.	Commission Spokesman
Ford Rainey	Commission Spokesman
Joe Di Reda	Actor
William Jordan	Tucker's Aide
Robert Lieb	Actor
William Swan	Actor
Vernon Weddle	Actor
Betty Murray	madame Carroll
Edward Winter	le sénateur Jameson
Alma Beltran	Joy Holder
Jimmy Davis	Sen. Hammond
Doria Cook-Nelson	Actor
Richard Bull	Actor
Ronda Copland	Actor
Patsy Garrett	Actor
Penelope Gillette	Actor
Michael Small	Composer
Stacy Keach	Actor

Technical Credits

David Giler

Lorenzo Semple Jr.

Robert Towne

Alan J. Pakula	Director,Producer
Gabriel Katzka	Executive Producer
David Giler	Screenwriter
Lorenzo Semple Jr.	Screenwriter
Robert Towne	Screenwriter
Robert Jiras	Producer
David Dockendorf	Sound Effects,Sound/Sound Designer
Tom Overton	Sound Effects

Editorial Reviews

Made between Klute (1971) and All the President's Men (1976), The Parallax View was the most paranoid film in Pakula's paranoia trilogy. The influence of the Parallax Corporation appears to be limitless; the questions about the Kennedy assassination and the conclusion of the Watergate affair in 1974 only underlined how much the public didn't know about home-grown threats to democracy and free will. Gordon Willis's eloquent widescreen cinematography repeatedly isolates Joe in sterile, empty environments, while Parallax's "test" film reveals how patriotic values can be perverted and manipulated to serve a corrupt system. All of this proved too dark even for a 1974 audience that embraced such other challenging films of that year as The Godfather, Part II and Chinatown, making The Parallax View the sole flop of Pakula's trilogy. Regardless, its evocative visual style and implacably bleak tone make The Parallax View an effectively disquieting suspense thriller and a sign of its politically troubled times.

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola