RETROSPECTIVE
‘A Nightmare Based Upon The Terrors Of Our Time’: ‘Parallax View’ At 50
The second film in director Alan Pakula’s ‘70s Paranoia Trilogy’ was released on June 19, 1974
If a film like “The Parallax View” was made today, it would be considered incendiary. Studio executives would be uneasy about distributing the film, and prestige media columnists would accuse the filmmakers of promoting toxic, tinfoil-hat conspiracy culture.
But 50 years ago, the United States was steeped in the post-Watergate era. Hollywood was also in the middle of a renaissance sometimes referred to as the American New Wave. Filmmakers were permitted to make movies with pessimistic storylines that grappled with the widespread sense among Americans that they were living in a lawless country.
Alan Pakula directed “The Parallax View” as part of his “70s Paranoia Trilogy.” It was adapted from a 1970 novel written by Loren Singer, and the book was inspired by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.
In the film, a shadowy corporation carries out assassinations of U.S. politicians and any witnesses to their killing. A commission subsequently “investigates” the shocking…
