BY TODD GARBARINI
The
late Loren Adelson Singer, who passed away in 2009, has published several
novels as an author, among them That’s the House, There (1973), Boca
Grande (1974), and Making Good (1993). His first work, 1970’s The
Parallax View, published by Doubleday, was written as an answer to his disdain
for the printing business he worked at with his father-in-law and proved to be
enough of a success to permit him to become a paid author. The inspiration for
the book came from the covert operations he assisted in while training with the
Office of Strategic Services and was penned following the high-profile political
assassinations of the 1960’s. It also provided the blueprint for the film of
the same title directed by the late Alan J. Pakula, the second in his informally
named “paranoia trilogy,†bookended by Klute (1971) and All the
President’s Men (1976).
The
Parallax View concerns
the mysterious workings of a corporate entity, The Parallax Corporation, that
appears to be behind the assassinations of political nominees regardless of
which side of the aisle they sit on. It is 1971 and Charles Carroll (William
Joyce) is campaigning while at a luncheon atop Seattle’s Space Needle. Lee
Carter (Paula Prentiss) is covering the event for a television news story and her
ex-boyfriend, newspaper reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty), attempts to gain
access to the event but is denied entry when Carter shrugs him off. An
associate of Carroll’s, Austin Tucker (William Daniels), speaks with Carter in
a short on-camera interview. Two sinister-looking waiters (Bill McKinney and Richard
Bull) serve food when suddenly the former shoots and kills Carroll in front of
shocked and horrified guests. A chase ensues and the other “waiter†falls to
his death.
Three
years later, a shaken Carter goes to Frady and unleashes a tale of paranoia,
revealing that several witnesses at the luncheon have all died under mysterious
circumstances. Frady initially brushes off her concerns until Carter is found
dead 24 hours later. Out of guilt, he begins to investigate the deaths and in a
major scene lifted straight from the novel he nearly dies himself, outsmarting
a “sheriff†who sets Frady up to be drowned at the hands of a deluge running
out from a dam (in the novel it’s a “helpful hotel managerâ€). Frady manages to
secure documents concerning the Parallax Corporation from the sheriff’s house
and tries to convince his skeptical editor, Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn), of the
links to the deaths. Frady then turns his attention to Austin Tucker and
accompanies Tucker and his aide on a yacht ride to talk – until a bomb onboard
kills both men and Frady narrowly escapes by jumping overboard. It seems that
wherever Frady goes, a Parallax minion is not too far behind. This sets in
motion a series of near logic-defying events which results in an ending of ambivalence.
To
fully appreciate this film in 2021, one needs to be aware of the climate of
fear and panic that must have pervaded the zeitgeist in the 1960’s and 1970’s
when seemingly no one could be trusted. After the assassinations of John F.
Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm Little/Malcolm X in February 1965, Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. in April 1968, and Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968, who really
could? The film was shot in the Spring of 1973 while the country was in the
Watergate scandal and points to evil forces at work that Frady hope to get to
the bottom of. In the novel, Joe’s name is Malcolm Graham and works with Austin
Tucker to uncover the mystery.
Conspiracy
thrillers of this era concerned with Everyman against the Establishment often
possessed creepy, minimalist musical scores and The Parallax View is no
exception. Michael Small provides an excellent theme on the heels of his work
for Klute prior to passing the baton to David Shire on All the
President’s Men (Mr. Shire coincidentally scored Francis Coppola’s, his
then-brother-in-law, masterful The Conversation in 1974). It is
reminiscent of the music he would later write for John Schlesinger’s Marathon
Man (1976).
Walter
McGinn, the late actor who sadly died in an automobile accident in March 1977,
is excellent as Jack Younger, a rep from The Parallax Corporation who is sent
to feel out and vet Frady (who is assuming the identity of “Richard†and
wanting to give the impression that he died on the boat) based on his (forged)
test results. One can only wonder if Jack has fallen for Frady’s/Richard’s ploy,
or if he is actually privy to the deliberate subterfuge – given how meticulous
and cold The Parallax Corporation is, and the transpiring of events during the
film’s ending, one has to assume the latter. The audience is made to believe
that the Corporation is for more sophisticated than the average company at the
time, if they have access to top-of-the line intelligence and money-is-no-option/sophisticated
surveillance equipment. A shrewd viewer will beg the questions: how did The
Parallax Corporation manage to keep several steps ahead of the subjects it
intended to kill? Assuming they did had access to top security equipment, how were
they able to harness it? One could theoretically drive themselves crazy
pondering such questions.
The
Parallax View is a
challenging film to follow and I cannot fathom how first-time viewers
introduced to the film on CBS in its television broadcast premiere on
Wednesday, February 23, 1977 fared in attempting to follow all the visual
information that must have been lost due to the lack of letterboxing the image.
It was released by Paramount Home Video in June 1999 in a lackluster DVD package
which boasted a trailer as the singular, albeit de rigueur, extra. The
Criterion Collection has now added this film to its roster of Blu-ray titles
and is now available. The new Blu-ray comes with the following extras:
There
is a new and restored 4K digital transfer derived from the original camera
negative which was shot in anamorphic Panavision. The image sports a higher-than-average
degree of film grain which may be attributed to the film stock used at the
time. The audio is monaural.
There
is a new introduction to the film by director Alex Cox of Repo Man
(1984), Sid & Nancy (1986), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(1998) fame. This piece runs about fifteen minutes and Mr. Cox speaks highly of
Parallax and compares it to Elio Petri’s The Mattei Affair
(1972), a film that shared the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in
May 1972 with The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971). He mentions the
depiction of the assassination of President Kennedy in David Miller’s Executive
Action (1973); name-drops Francis Coppola’s best film, The Conversation
and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) with its conspiracy plot and
political corruption narrative and points out how the outsourcing of
intelligence is so commonplace now (think Eric Snowden) and how it affects not
just political candidates but the entire worldwide population, with some
exceptions. Curiously, there is no mention of the eerily prescient John
Frankenheimer outing The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
There
are two interviews with director Alan J. Pakula wherein he discusses the film.
The first is an eighteen-minute audio interview from 1974 conducted by the
American Film Institute (AFI) and the second is a six-minute on-camera
interview from 1995.
Figures
in Space is the name of an
eighteen-minute onscreen interview with cinematographer Gordon Willis shot in
June 2004 at his home in Massachusetts, ten years prior to his passing. He is
best known for shooting The Godfather trilogy and eight films for Woody
Allen, including 1977’s Oscar-winning Annie Hall and 1979’s gorgeous
black and white, anamorphic-lensed Manhattan. He discusses his affection
for the anamorphic Panavision 2.35:1 framing which is generally reserved for
big-screen epics. His usage of negative space and the framing of characters in
the film add to the sinister vibe. He shot the entire “paranoia trilogyâ€.
There
is an October 2020 interview with Jon Boorstin, assistant to the director on The
Parallax View.
English
subtitles are included for the deaf and hard of hearing.
There
is also a lengthy essay by critic Nathan Heller in the accompanying booklet and
a new cover by Adam Maida.
The
most obvious and glaring omission from the set is any lengthy discussion of the
novel upon which the film is based, although the script did undergo many
revisions during principal photography, a maneuver replicated on the set of
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). I wonder how the author felt about the
finished film.
I
would have welcomed multiple audio commentaries on this Blu-ray with political
pundits and filmmakers/historians, given the computer hacking and
firewall-breaching times we live in today and how the film relates to people
nearly fifty years later. The largest conspiracy theory in recent memory is arguably
the assertion by former President Donald Trump and his most diehard fans that
the 2020 election was stolen from him and that he is, in fact, still the
President of the United States. The most interesting (and telling) aspect of
the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol is that it was precipitated by a
large group of Trump adherents, many of whom did not even participate in the very
election they were ostensibly attempting to discredit.
That deserves a look under the microscope.
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