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Long Nights, Bright Paranoia: The Parallax View
Long Nights, Bright Paranoia
Four Films to Make Your February Even Darker
Series curated by John Massier
Directed by Alan J. Pakula, 1974, 102 min. From our interview with John Massier: Q: So, we’re up to the final film in this series. I understand you’re fond of The Parallax View.
A: One of my favorite films of all time.
Q: Why is that?
A: Oh boy, let me count the ways….It’s a ferociously lean film with no unnecessary exposition, no unnecessary dialogue, pointed use of a very lean soundtrack, one of Warren Beatty’s best performances ever, tight direction by Alan J. Pakula and, most of all, my favorite film of cinematographer Gordon Willis. It’s completely preposterous to me that this film didn’t receive a single Academy Award nomination in ANY category.
Q: Didn’t Willis shoot the Godfather films?
A: He did and as great as those are, I prefer what he did visually in The Parallax View. There’s just something about his use of anamorphic compositions, his unique framing, and his often shallow focus that really plays into the paranoid atmosphere of the film. Not to mention the amazing assassin training montage near the end of the film—a little “film within the film” that actually does not look dated, even if the images used are from the late 60s and early 70s.
Q: The film was released 11 years after the JFK assassination and at a time when that event was still fresh in everyone’s psyche and occupied an ever-increasing conspiracy-minded public. Does it prove or disprove anything about that event?
A: Not at all and it doesn’t even attempt it. What it does, dramatically speaking, is take the notion of a shadowy conspiratorial cabal as a given—not because that represents any particular truth, but because it’s a handy device to hang a film upon. The Senator murdered at the beginning of the film is clearly meant to be an amalgam of both JFK and RFK, perhaps more the latter since RFK was murdered in a crowded kitchen and that’s a similar scenario to the crowd of people atop Seattle’s Space Needle.
Q: There’s a nice Hitchcock reference in that scene, to an iconic scene from Foreign Correspondent.
A: Indeed. With a similar outcome.
Q: What is it that you like about Beatty’s performance here?
A: It’s arguably where his “befuddled handsome guy” expression is most interestingly used, rather than in, say, a romantic comedy. As another character tells him halfway through the film, “You don’t know what you know.” Beatty plays that angle really well in the film—the guy who is sharp enough to suspect something without really knowing what exactly he suspects.
Q: This is the middle film in Pakula’s paranoid political trilogy, bookended by Klute and All The President’s Men. Of the three, why choose The Parallax View?
A: It always seems to me it’s the one least talked-about and part of this series has been trying to screen the less-obvious examples from different eras. In fact, released during the Golden Age of 1970s American cinema, you could somewhat forgive the fact that The Parallax View is often forgotten. But it shouldn’t be. It’s a stone cold classic.
