The Parallax View
Tags: brainwashing, neo noir, murder

Plot synopsis:
Seattle, Washington. Senator Charles Carroll (William "Bill" Boyce), an independent senator, is holding a luncheon atop the Seattle Space Needle. Joe Frady (Warren Beatty), an alcoholic journalist, tries to gain entry to the luncheon, but is turned away. At the restaurant atop the Space Needle, Senator Carroll is holding a press conference when he is suddenly shot to death by an unseen assassin. Everyone looks around and sees a waiter holding a gun, and he is jumped by security guards. However, a second waiter (Bill McKinney), who also has a gun (and the real or second shooter) leaves unnoticed. The first waiter replies that he didn't do it, and he is chased over the roof of the building by guards, where he accidentally slips and falls off the roof to his death. The real assassin chuckles as he leaves the scene and reports to an unseen contact that the job is finished. Four months later, a commission holds a special public gathering and they conclude that the waiter, named Thomas Richard Lindern (Chuck Waters), acted alone and that there is no greater conspiracy to the assassination of Senator Carroll.Three years later. Joe Frady, writing for a Portland, Oregon newspaper, sets himself up to get arrested to get a story on a major drug bust. Frady is bailed out of jail by his boss and editor Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn) who always complains that Frady is trying to create news rather than reporting it. Shortly thereafter, Frady is visited by Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), a Seattle newscaster and his former girlfriend, who tells them that she fears for her life. Lee tells Frady that someone is trying to kill her and that six other reporters at the luncheon have all died mysteriously during the past two years. Frady shrugs her off by telling her that she's just being paranoid. But a few days later, Lee is found dead in her apartment. Frady investigates and the coroner tells him that she apparently killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills, but Frady knows different.Frady tells Rintels that there is a story brewing here about the events behind the Senator Carroll assassination, and Rintels reluctantly agrees to let Frady pursue his story. Frady meets with a former FBI agent (Kenneth Mars) who informs him that they are many methods that can be used to make someone's death look like an accident or suicide such as certain drugs which are fatal, but show up that a person's heart failed on them.Frady travels to a small fishing village in upstate Washington where one of the witnesses to Carroll's assassination died. At the local bar, a rough deputy, named Red (Earl Hindman), tries to beat up Frady, but after a long and vicious fistfight, Frady wins, knocking out Deputy Red. The sheriff, L.D. Wicker (Kelly Thorsden), appears and applauds Frady for standing up to his loathsome deputy and he is rather friendly towards him. Frady asks the sheriff for information about the dead person, claiming to be an old friend.Sheriff L.D. takes Frady to the spot where the Carroll witness died: a small creek right in front of a large dam. The sheriff explains that the man, Alan Bridges, was fishing when a dam sluice had opened up, releasing tons of water to relieve pressure on the dam as it does every few days and that that Bridges was washed away and drowned. Just then, a siren announces that the dam sluice is opening again. Suddenly, the sheriff pulls a gun on Frady explaining that he cannot let him get too close to what happened to Mr. Bridges. Frady and the sheriff struggle and are swept away by the wall of water that hits both of them. Frady grabs a shore rock and makes it ashore while the sheriff is swept away and drowns.Taking Sheriff L.D.'s car, Frady goes to the sheriff's apartment to search it for evidence and finds test applications to the Parallax Corporation. Just then, Deputy Red arrives at the apartment looking for the sheriff and Frady runs. After a long and wild car case, Frady escapes from the deputy.Returning to Portland, Frady tells Rintels what happened and shows him the copies of the Parallax Corporation application tests, and that there's something big going on. But Rintels refuses to believe Frady is onto something. Frady takes the test application to a psychology lab where the attending psychoanalyst believes that the tests are for measuring one's mental state and ability to commit crimes. Frady allows a lab worker, and a former prison convict who served time for murder, to take the test. Using the alias of "Richard Paley", Frady submits the finished test result to Parallax.A few days later, Frady meets with Austin Tucker (William Daniels), a former Carroll aide, who has arrived in the country and claims that people are trying to kill him for Senator Carroll had many enemies from his past for his liberal views and work. Tucker and his aide/bodyguard take Frady out on a sailboat where he confides in Frady that there is indeed a wide conspiracy in the Carroll assassination and that Thomas Richard Lindern did not act alone and that a powerful corporation may have covered it up. Tucker shows photos that were taken of the luncheon on that day, and points to the second waiter in one of the photographs and asks Frady if he knows the man. Frady doesn't and asks why. Tucker tells Frady that it's probably nothing, but Tucker also explains that he cannot shake the feeling that the second waiter looks familiar. A few minutes later, the boat explodes from a bomb hidden in the cabin. Frady sitting on the bow of the boat jumps overboard, while Tucker and his aide, catching the full blast, are killed.Frady meets with Rintels and tells him about what happened and Rintels agrees to help Frady with his story. Using his alias, Frady checks himself into a fleabag motel in downtown Los Angeles, and a few days later a certain 'Jack Younger' (Walter McGinn), claiming to be a representative of the Parallax Corporation, contacts Frady in his room and says that his aggressiveness (as shown on the test answers) makes him valuable for certain corporations. Younger asks Frady/Richard Paley to join the corporation for the 'special projects' division.Frady goes to the Parallax offices in downtown L.A. and meets with Mr. Younger who shows him a special room where Frady is 'tested' with a series of brainwashing techniques with him being shown various photos and images of death and destruction as if to make him suitable for indoctrination. Frady becomes aware that this branch of the Parallax is a training ground for assassins.As Frady is leaving the building for the day when his 'tests' are finished, he spots the second waiter from the Tucker photo talking to some businessmen. Frady follows the second waiter/assassin outside to his car and tails him driving around the city. The assassin switches cars with another person, and obtains a briefcase which he takes to the local airport.The assassin checks himself on a plane to Chicago, and Frady checks himself on the same plane. The plane takes off, but the assassin does not board for he has apparently checked in his briefcase which has a bomb in it. On the plane, Frady sees that that assassin is nowhere to be found, and after seeing that a prominent senator on board, realizes that the plane must have a bomb on board. After trying to sneak a message on a restroom mirror, Frady anonymously passes a note on a napkin to a stewardess that a bomb is on board. The stewardess relays the news to the pilot who immediately returns the plane to Los Angeles. After everyone has disembarked, the plane explodes.Frady returns to his seedy motel room to find Mr. Younger waiting for him and he informs Frady that Parallax have already had an offer of employment for Frady, but he immediately expresses suspicion as a background check made by Parallax on Frady showed that some of his references were false. Frady then makes up a new alias for Younger explaining that he's an alcoholic and lied on his background to land a job. Younger offers to look into it and again promises Frady that Parallax is a great opportunity for people like him, and then leaves.Realizing that it will only be a matter of time before they discover his real identity, Frady secretly mails the Parallax test papers and an audiotape he made on a mini-tape recorder of his conversation with Younger to Rintels. Along with it is a note from Frady who explains that he may be in way over his head and that if anything were to happen to him, that Rintels should publish this information about Parallax and what they do on the sidelines of recruiting assassins to kill prominent officials who threaten or get too close to the corporation's nefarious plans. Rintels listens to the tape and finally realizes that Frady is onto something big. Rintels, who practically lives in his office and orders take-out food every day from a deli across the street, orders more food as he reviews more of the papers Frady has mailed to him. Just then, the deli delivery guy arrives with Rintels' latest food order. The delivery guy is the Parallax assassin in disguise. The next morning, Rintels is found dead by his employees in his office, dead from an apparent "heart attack" after he was poisoned. The evidence is gone and the audio tape has been erased.In Los Angeles, Frady, unaware of Rintels' murder and that he is now on his own, gets his first assignment to meet with his new co-worker at a local hotel for their "assignments". Frady sneaks out of the planned meeting place and goes to Parallax's offices asking to meet with Mr. Younger, but is told that Younger is out. Frady spots the Parallax assassin and follows him into the hallways of the L.A. Convention Center. Mr. Younger is there with more Parallax businessmen/assassins where they are talking about their latest plans. Frady watches them from a distance as Mr. Younger leaves and the Parallax assassin and a few others go to the platforms above the floor of the convention hall.Frady sees that down below Senator Hammond (Jim Davis), a prominent California senator, is rehearsing a speech he will give that night. Frady believes that the assassin is going to shoot the senator with a rifle that he loads and lies down on the walkway above the convention hall. Then, just as Senator Hammond is planning to leave before he makes his appearance, the assassin suddenly leaves, leaving Frady in hiding on the walkway, alone and locked in the area. Suddenly, shots ring out as one of the assassins shoots and kills Hammond with a second rifle from a concealed location, just as Hammond is riding in a golf cart out of the convention hall. Everyone looks up and around for the shooter, and sees Frady.... standing on the plank way above them near the unused rifle. THEY THINK HE DID IT!!!! Frady realizes (way too late) that he's been set up! Frady hides under the plank way as three Parallax security guards/assassins show up looking for him. When police sirens are heard, the three assassins flee, leaving the door to the exit wide open. After a few minutes, Frady tries to run for the exit, when the assassin appears as a menacing silhouette in the doorway (anticipating that Frady would do just that) and guns him down, and thus announces that they got the shooter.Several months later, a second congressional commission is held where the commissioner members (pompous and easily fooled) report that Frady had blamed Senator Hammond for the Carroll assassination and had sought revenge. Once again for apparently the countless time, the Parallax Corporation gets away with it when the commission rules that there is no conspiracy in the Hammond assassination and the Parallax name is not mentioned at all. Frady was the lone assassin. Case closed.

Review: When I hear mention of Warren Beatty these days I almost begin to snore, but before Beatty became a boring old fart he made a handful of very interesting and adventurous movies like 'Mickey One', 'McCabe & Mrs Miller' and 'The Parallax View', hardly safe Hollywood movie star material.
Caan successfully defeats the setup, telling and punchline (though he's probably not long for this world.)In the case of Warren Beatty in the PARALLAX VIEW, he is elected to take the fall for a political assassination which will simultaneously discredit his own conspiracy investigations.
Pakula's 1974 film about political murders is a superbly crafted thriller that holds the audience in its quiet, unsettling grip.Warren Beatty gives his character of Joe Frady, a "third-rate" journalist, just the right balance of recklessness and determination to enable one to have faith in this man to uncover such shady, potentially threatening goings-on.Beatty is ably backed up by the supporting cast, most notably Hume Cronyn as Frady's editor, and Paula Prentiss and William Daniels as, respectively, a television reporter and columnist both in fear for their lives.Composer Michael Small's main theme (used at strategic points throughout the film and often playing on the traditional patriotic sound of the trumpet) has a quality both mournful and despairing that relates effectively to what we are watching.
Gordon Willis's Panavision photography conveys threat in even the most everyday of locations (his rendering of modern architecture is especially strong in suggesting a faceless, omnipotent threat), while the editing rhythms and sound design contribute a great deal in throwing the audience off-balance.Pakula has been involved in more widely-known projects such as All The President's Men and Presumed Innocent, but The Parallax View is definitely one of his best and most powerful films..
"The Parallax View" was one of the movies that reflected this.* Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is a reporter who one day is covering a candidate's campaign, when the candidate is assassinated.
If you have a single definitive answer (or view), then you don't have a parallax (view).Everyone will come out of this film with a different idea of what it was about or what really happened -- their own interpretations of the information presented to them -- kind of like how conspiracy theorists generally operate.For example, Zapruder shot his JFK film from one angle -- and 12 other people also shot films or photos at the moments of the assassination, all from different angles (or points of view).
And when something malevolent happens, the suspense is diffused in favor of creeping through this dark, kitchen-sink world governed by power, fear and indoctrination.Another thing at which Pakula excels, and at which he reached an indelible peak in All the President's Men, is demonstrated consistently throughout The Parallax View.
Nevertheless, in Z, it adds up to a clear-cut conspiracy, even though not all the conspirators will be punished; here it adds up to a depressing - but again "real" - failure to get the evidence where and when it is needed (like Silkwood).What sets it apart in my viewing, however, is the way Pakula deploys visual metaphors throughout the story, and I am disappointed that other commentators obviously haven't picked up on them.
And whilst it may not be as polished or complete a production as the other two movies, I'd argue that it's the one which is most effective at capturing the early 1970's paranoiac Zeitgeist.The thriller stars Hollywood legend Warren Beatty as an American small-town journalist, Joseph Frady, who becomes drawn into a deadly investigation due to events he witnessed earlier in his career.
The purpose of this 'film within a film' seems to be to question the amount of trust that we should place in society's traditional institutions.So, although The Parallax View ultimately may lack the cohesion and cinematic rhythm to be an outstanding thriller or mystery - unlike the masterpiece that is Chinatown, for example - this unusual film still deserves to be regarded as a classic of the conspiracy genre.
Not only are the political-paranoia aspects dated today, and way over-used by many other films since, but the picture doesn't even work perfectly as a thriller; it holds some interest most of the way but in the final 20 minutes, when the story is supposed to be climaxing, the suspense just peters out and drains away.
They should have done away with the awkward plane scene and prolonged this as the stage where we know our movie about political conspiracy is going to play again (the first time on the Shuttle we weren't looking close, now we will).
Not Dated At All. Not only is PARALLAX VIEW not dated, it remains a sleeper of a film and an eye-opening study of how an innocent person hovering at the edge of a conspiracy investigation is attracted, manipulated, and finally shoved in as the patsy for the murder of a Presidential candidate.The John F.
Conspiracy thriller has newspaper reporter Warren Beatty investigating years-old assassination of a U.S. Senator wherein witnesses to the shooting are all mysteriously dying.
OK, the cinematography by Gordon Willis is excellent and Hume Cronyn is as good as ever (in a role announcing Jason Robarts' award-winning performance in All the President's Men).If you're looking for a good conspiracy movie I'd rather advise you to watch Three Days of the Condor.
(Pakula followed this with the equally excellent "All the President's Men." I suppose some would call that film paranoid, as well.)Beatty witnesses an assassination atop the Space Needle in Seattle, and gets the conspiracy bug bad, as he watches one mysterious witness death, after another.
Pakula's mastery for the political thriller has cemented The Parallax View as a longstanding classic that will certainly not be surpassed anytime soon.Upon the assassination of Senator Charles Carroll (William Joyce), of which Joseph Frady (Warren Beatty) witnessed, several other witnesses are being murdered.
An ambitious reporter (Warren Beatty) gets in way-over-his-head trouble while investigating a senator's assassination which leads to a vast conspiracy involving a multinational corporation behind every event in the world's headlines.This is not a well-known thriller, even with Beatty leading the way.
(SOME SPOILERS) Early conspiracy film that goes to great lengths to show it's audience how a assassination of a political figure is set up like a magic show where the observers eyes are made to follow the wrong person, with help from fellow conspirators planted at the scene, while the real killer or killers get away Scot-free.
Just listening to Michael Small's score and his subtle, ingenious layering of minor chords seathing ominously through a Sousa style march as if to say all is not as it appears, always gives me chills every time I watch this movie.Every scene and sound speaks a poetic subtext of underlying conspiracy and paranoia like no "X-files" episode ever could.
This movie was my first realization of how film language and score could communicate volumes so eloquently beyond the spoken word.With the tranquil, contemplative and modularly composed cinematography combined with an abrupt, stark and agnst ridden editing style as was done in "Klute", Parallax View shows a cinematic sophistication that makes current films seem contrived and dumbed down no matter the maturity of the subject.It's a cinematic layering of hints to Kennedy assassination theories, shadowy "men in black" hit men recruited as government security, implying a deep subgovernment network pulling political strings under a facade of right wing flag waving corporate culture.
Some of the more effective scenes of Beatty's character pretending to be recruited by the shadowy Parallax Corporation are fairly tense and effective, but are quickly overwhelmed by plodding, predictable nonsense.This may have been a good made-for-TV movie at the time, but not much more.
If you like Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn, Jo Ann Harris, Anthony Zerbe, the rest of the cast in the film, Thrillers, and interesting Action films then I strongly recommend you to see the Parallax View today!.
You get the sense that Pakula, who would go on to Direct All the President's Men, was attempting to say something, but those pesky conventions of thriller cinema kept thwarting him as if he were drowning in his own little Hollywood conspiracy.At the time of the film's release, America was still reeling from the duplicity of Kissingerian power politics.
Do we all secretly take the written test, looking at the questions before us like, "do you believe people are following you?"This film takes the reality of the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, JFK, and Martin Luther King and adds the "second gunman" conspiracy.
Parallax View seems a bit dated by today's standards; while not hopelessly mired in the 70s as other films of its time, it nonetheless embraces the trust no one' feel of the day, when Watergate ran rampant and government was a looming evil in everyone's lives (good to know that some things haven't changed).
Beatty stars as Joe Frady, an investigative journalist who begins to get interested in an assassination story three years after it happened  because one by one all the witnesses are dying off.
Even a last minute twist doesn't help; while the movie keeps us on edge through most of its length, it never ups the ante toward the end, and it should.But still, Parallax is an effective thriller and a well-made film, certainly earning a place with better known pictures of a similar ilk, such as Three Days of the Condor or All the President's Men. The twist ending is still a surprise and would be virtually unthinkable by today's Hollywood standards (see the remake of Manchurian Candidate for proof).
Pakula's best installment of his so-called "political paranoia" trilogy, The Parallax View was produced after Klute and before All the President's Men. The confidence of the viewer is undermined from plot point to plot point, with a political assassination in the opening, and the killing of the leading lady (Paula Prentiss), even more abruptly than in Psycho or Dressed to Kill.
So production began without a script and in the midst of a writers' strike in Hollywood, but Pakula liked chaos and cunningly judged it an opportunity, in light of ongoing political developments in the US.As a film, PARALLAX has an interesting premise, with reporters who watched an assassination being steadily assassinated themselves, leaving only Frady (Beatty) on the run, and he just survives the whole nefarious and sinister affair but the film ends on an unconnected compilation of stills which are meant to be significant but which just highlight the gargantuan ambitiousness of a film that simply does not have the script, the direction or the actors, to make a cogent statement.At his own imposition, Beatty was always shot in a manner that enhanced his good looks, from angles that he would personally endorse, regardless of Pakula's vision, and that caused some friction between the two men .
At the end of this story, they behave exactly like the Warren Commission, insisting that they close the books on what is their theory of the Parallax case.Inquisitive reporter WARREN BEATTY decides to do an investigation of his own after more than half a dozen witnesses to the crime are subject to suspicious deaths.
A relatively interesting paranoia political thriller, the film is quite well directed by Pakula, who gives careful attention to the way in which every shot is set up.
Pakula has a great eye when it comes to light and darkness, and he knows how make every scene look interesting - a talent that he used further and to better use in 'All the President's Men' a couple of years later - and having Woody Allen's frequent cinematographer, Gordon Willis, on hand helps.
Likely, Pakula was inspired by Watergate and the re-opening of the JFK assassination, both which happened at the time this film was made.
One of the best of all conspiracy theory movies and a brilliant political thriller, "The Parallax View" came from a time in the mid-seventies when American cinema appeared to have reached a peak in providing intelligent, grown-up entertainments that were both fun to watch and which required bringing your brain into the cinema with you rather than leaving it in the foyer with the popcorn.
The above film is a far superior political thriller in comparison to the same director's later film, "All the President's Men." "The Parallax View" is actually a powerful and quite disturbing film about the efforts of one journalist (Warren Beatty) who investigates supposedly accidental deaths which are all linked to the events that unfold at the beginning of the film.
Enter Alan Pakula and his trilogy of paranoia series...Klute, Parallax View and All the President's Men. Even Coppola got in on it with an even better film than Parallax...The Conversation.These are all good films but they all suffer from 1 main thing...it's all a conspiracy so watch out.
I am going to file this one under "lost classic."Warren Beatty plays Joseph Frady a reporter who, along with his girlfriend Lee (paula Prentiss), witnesses the assassination of Senator in Seattle.
We know Alan Pakula showed a lot of interest in doing "uncomfortable" movies, which explore the mysteries of American political life (see above all "All the President's men" of 1976).This "Parallax view" was made two years before, in 1974.
Thirty-odd years on, it still packs a punch and had me hooked from start to finish.Bookended by the deliberately near-darkness, slow-tracking shots of the official investigating committee's delivery of the valedictory (and as events show) clearly wrong "lone-gunman" verdict on the two political assassinations (indicating symbolically the shadiness and anonymity of the authorities), producer/director Pakula in-between delivers a taut, gripping and highly intelligent political thriller.Made only 6 years after the dual RFK/MLK assassinations and barely two after the attempted murder of Democratic candidate George Wallace, the movie expounds its "conspiracy-theory" prognosis winningly and borrows actual aspects from both Kennedy killings (for JFK, the mysterious deaths of innumerable key witnesses, for RFK, the actual staging of the hit itself, in a high-profile contained setting) to further bolster credibility.
Pakula mixes up shots, changing perspective and lighting throughout to keep the viewer off-guard, the camera often pointing upwards (symbolising danger/evil in high places), but never loses the heart of the story.It also benefits from a great lead performance by Warren Beatty as a fairly unlikeable maverick journalist, Joe Frady, himself a bystander at the first killing, who finally gets convinced that there's a story here when one too many co-witness/victim (and one known personally to him) predicts her own "sudden death" which duly occurs only days later.Like the equally superb "Manchurian Candidate" from the previous decade, the viewer is manipulated into believing the unbelievable (that the political authorities were at least ignorant and at worst complicit in the taking-out of high-ranking figures in the public eye, as carried out here by the mysterious, nefarious CIA-like Parallax Corporation), the film also borrows from its predecessor the "brainwashing" premise of assassin-recruitment.
Of course the film is dated in some ways, with some gratuitous fight/chase sequences and we're never properly made aware as to just why the two politicians are singled out for death, its somewhat demeaning outlook towards women and the insertion of the lengthy "Parallax" mind-suggestion sequence like an overspill from the psychedelic 60's, but at the time and today, this terrific movie held and indeed still holds up a grimy mirror in the face of America's political establishment while at the same time delivering great cinematic entertainment..
Pakula (All the Presidents Men} here tackles another political conspiracy film, this though its not based in fact like his Oscar winning effort (well at least I don't think so} but its none the worse for that as its still an enthralling viewing, albeit a very slow one, Beatty is perfectly cast as the nosey reporter, who is deeper in than he realizes, he thinks he's the hunter, when the reality is quite different.
Since it's the 70s we're also given a fairly bleak ending meant to rile up an audience that's lived through the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam and Watergate and Nixon, and know something must be wrong here.Warren Beatty plays in good star power a low-rent journalist who was there the day a senator was killed in the Seattle needle tower.
Three years later a woman he knew comes to him saying that six of the 18 people who were there and saw the killing have been dying, one by one, in "accidents." Beatty investigates and soon finds a "corporation" called Parallax, which is like some crazy security company that oversees special interests.
Warren Beatty plays reporter Joe Frady, whose investigation of the assassination of a U.S. Senator leads him to a multinational corporation called Parallax, which seems to specialize in training assassins for various missions.
Joseph Frady (Warren Beatty) is an investigative journalist who is tipped off that the assassination of a senator 3 years ago may have involved more than one person.
Seems like our assassins seem to be cut from the same mold.What can I say, but Beatty becomes a victim of his own story.I saw The Parallax View when it came out in theater years ago.
We learn nothing about the mysterious Parallax Corporation except that like many other movie evil corporations, they believe that the best way to cover up an assassination is to kill as many other people as possible.The pacing is slow, the storytelling is weak, even the cinematography, while impressive, is seriously dated looking.Trapped inside for a weekend?
The fact that the events that unfolded are not plausible only reinforced my feeling that maybe it was just his way of pointing out to a cynical public that the idea of this type of organized conspiracy was simply ludicrous, so he presented a film that suggests just that!Personally I liked the movie, there is a good cast with Warren Beatty, William Daniels, Paula Prentiss, Hume Conyn and Earl Hindaman (who played Mr Brown in the taking of Pelham 1,2,3).
Parallax View, starring Warren Beatty playing a reporter in Alan J Pakula's film, a couple years before ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN.