While the Watergate scandal filled the headlines, Alan J. Pakula's 1974 thriller took its inspiration from the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Journalist Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) misses witnessing the assassination of a senator at Seattle's Space Needle, but his newswoman former girlfriend Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss) was there. Even after a government commission concludes that it was a freak lone assassin, Lee tells Joe that she fears for her life since other
witnesses keep dying. After she too turns up dead, Joe investigates, travelling to the small town where another witness has mysteriously expired. Stumbling on a corporate identity for the killers, Joe decides to dig deeper by infiltrating the Parallax Corporation as one of their hired assassins. As Joe becomes increasingly isolated in his assumed identity, he discovers what Parallax is all about -- but Parallax knows all about Joe too. Made between Klute (1971) and All the President's Men (1976), The Parallax View was the second film in Pakula's "paranoia" trilogy; it 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. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
For my taste the suspenseful set pieces go on much too long, and the message -- that right-wing conspiracy is built into the American political and corporate structure -- is overstated.
The thrills don't mount as the film goes on. They don't even accumulate. Once they are experienced, they dissolve so thoroughly that by the end you're likely to feel as cheated as I did.
The Parallax View is one of the great paranoid thrillers of the 1970s. Which, when you consider how paranoid America was post-Watergate, is high praise indeed.
A fotografia de Gordon Willis é sufocante, mas o filme empalidece frente a produções similares, como Sob o Domínio do Mal e Todos os Homens do Presidente.
A smart, engrossing paranoid political thriller concerning a journalist (Warren Beatty) who stumbles upon a conspiracy in which a senator who was murdered three years ago might actually have been offed by the government. While it does not possess the same character depth such as say, "The Conversation", another
paranoid political thriller, had, it still is exciting and watchable due to the twists it implements. The last fifteen minutes or so are particularly arresting, with sharp camera work which captures memorable shots, including its smart, cleverly pieced together grand finale, which doesn't disappoint.
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