Alan J. Pakula

The Parallax View

The Parallax View

Perhaps no director tapped into the pervasive sense of dread and mistrust that defined the 1970s more effectively than Alan J. Pakula, who, in the second installment of his celebrated Paranoia Trilogy, offers a chilling vision of America in the wake of the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr., and about to be shocked by Watergate. Three years after witnessing the murder of a leading senator atop Seattle’s Space Needle, reporter Joseph Frady (Warren Beatty) begins digging into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the killing—and stumbles into a labyrinthine conspiracy far more sinister than he could have imagined. The Parallax View’s coolly stylized, shadow-etched compositions by acclaimed cinematographer Gordon Willis give visual expression to a mood that begins as an anxious whisper and ends as a scream into the void.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1974
  • 102 minutes
  • Color
  • 2.39:1
  • English
  • Spine #1064

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • New introduction by filmmaker Alex Cox
  • Interviews with director Alan J. Pakula from 1974 and 1995
  • New program on cinematographer Gordon Willis featuring an interview with him from 2004
  • New interview with Jon Boorstin, assistant to Pakula on The Parallax View
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Nathan Heller and a 1974 interview with Pakula

New cover by Adam Maida

Purchase Options

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • New introduction by filmmaker Alex Cox
  • Interviews with director Alan J. Pakula from 1974 and 1995
  • New program on cinematographer Gordon Willis featuring an interview with him from 2004
  • New interview with Jon Boorstin, assistant to Pakula on The Parallax View
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Nathan Heller and a 1974 interview with Pakula

New cover by Adam Maida

The Parallax View
Cast
Warren Beatty
Joseph Frady
Hume Cronyn
Bill Rintels
William Daniels
Austin Tucker
Paula Prentiss
Lee Carter
Walter McGinn
Jack Younger
Credits
Director
Alan J. Pakula
Producer
Alan J. Pakula
Director of photography
Gordon Willis
Executive producer
Gabriel Katzka
Screenplay by
David Giler
Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Production design by
George Jenkins
Costume design by
Frank Thompson
Edited by
John W. Wheeler
Music by
Michael Small
Based upon a novel by
Loren Singer

Current

The Parallax View: Dark Towers
The Parallax View: Dark Towers

Alan J. Pakula captured the anxiety of the seventies in this noir-inflected conspiracy thriller, which offers a critique both of American institutions and of the self-made heroes who do battle with them.

By Nathan Heller

Michael Small, Film Music’s Prince of Paranoia
Michael Small, Film Music’s Prince of Paranoia

During the 1970s, an incredibly fertile decade for unorthodox approaches to film scoring, the composer of The Parallax View and Klute came into prominence with an out-of-the-box sound that captured the dread of the era.

By Tim Greiving