The Parallax View

This flaky piece of paranoia is a time capsule glimpse at the uber-paranoid '70s, when no conspiracy theory seemed too outlandish. In simplest terms, The Parallax View (1974) is a well-crafted thriller that's impossible to take seriously. To think it came from the man who made the sober, fact-based All the President's Men (1977) is disheartening.

Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is a newspaper reporter who witnesses the assassination of liberal Senator Charles Carroll (Billy Joyce). A fellow reporter, Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), approaches Frady several years later, claiming that despite the official ruling of a lone gunman, she believes there was a conspiracy to kill Carroll - and that the conspirators are bumping off witnesses. Frady brushes Lee off, but she soon turns up dead under questionable circumstances. Soon Frady is on the trail of the assassins, a mysterious corporation called Parallax, and infiltrates the group to save another politician (Jim Davis) from termination.

Among the most traumatic aspects of the '60s was the wave of assassinations (the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X). Refusing to believe that nobodies with guns could kill great men, a great many believed that vast conspiracies involving some combination of the Government, Big Business, the CIA, the Mob, right-wing nuts and space aliens did away with Kennedy and King. This trauma proved potent enough to spawn an entire subgenre of films - the conspiracy thriller - that still crops up, albeit less frequently, to this day (The X-Files, The International).

Oddly enough, the interesting Spaghetti Western The Price of Power (1969) may be the first film to tackle the Kennedy Assassination, albeit allegorically. The year before Parallax View saw Executive Action, a cheapjack "docu-drama" that plays like a rough draft of Oliver Stone's JFK. The best of these films (Z, All the President's Men) benefit from remaining grounded in reality, however angry their message and tone. None of these films, however, has the full-bore insanity of The Parallax View, perhaps the most cartoonish example of Watergate-era paranoia.

To say The Parallax View strains credulity is like calling the sun hot. This film assumes the conspirators have an infinite capacity to cover up and "silence" witnesses, able to simulate heart attacks and sneak assassins into the most isolated hick town. That's not even the biggest problem: there's no real motive presented for these assassinations. At least JFK posited a (inaccurate and silly) reason why the Powers That Be wanted Kennedy dead. Vaguely-liberal politicians everywhere are fair game in this universe, I guess. I'm sure others can stomach this nonsense, but I find it hard to accept Parallax even on its own wacky terms.

Then there's the celebrated montage halfway through the film. It defines pretentious: mashing idyllic photographs with images of '60s violence, it exists merely to call attention to itself, doing nothing to advance the plot and bogging down an already-draggy narrative. It's easy to "shock" viewers by cutting between a portrait of George Washington and a still from Triumph of the Will ("Washington! Hitler!"), but what does it actually mean? American culture is violent and the government lies? Stop the presses.

Alan J. Pakula does a fine job directing the film. Aside from the above montage, Pakula is a solid craftsman, even if his docudrama stylings occasionally clash with the commercial need for sensational action. The movie is beautifully filmed by Gordon Willis, especially the climactic assassination, which makes fine use of wide-angle shots and Dutch angles. And the opening scene is superb, its chaotic staging closely echoing Bobby Kennedy's shooting. There's nothing much wrong Parallax aside from its story, but sadly the story matters a great deal.

Warren Beatty makes a perfect Liberal Hero, the long-haired handsome journalist who single-handedly takes on the System and (almost) brings it down. Hume Cronyn (Shadow of a Doubt) gets a thankless role as Beatty's long-suffering editor. Bill McKinney (The Shootist) is creepy as a nameless assassin and Paula Prentiss (The Stepford Wives) makes a strong impression with minimal screen time. Walter McGinn (Three Days of the Condor), Kenneth Mars (Young Frankenstein), Jim Davis (El Dorado) and William Daniels (The Graduate) are fine in supporting roles.

The Parallax View is laughable, badly dated junk. It may well have been "provocative" at the time, and certainly has technical merits, but it comes off as juvenile today, a scary bedtime story for '70s liberals.