The film opens with the very public assassination of Senator Charles Carroll (William Joyce) and the immediate (also public) death of his assassin on the roof of the Seattle Space Needle. This term could not be a more captious and fitting title for a film dominated by opposing and conflicting views and ideas on what is happening. His investigations unveiling “The Parallax Corporation”, a clandestine organization involved in the recruiting and training of political assassins.Īccording to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the definition of Parallax is “the difference in apparent direction of an object as seen from two different points not on a straight line with the object”. Starring Warren Beatty as Joe Frady, an investigative reporter enticed to follow up on the mysterious deaths of witnesses to a prominent Senator’s assassination. Pakula and based on the Loren Singer 1970 novel, The Parallax View was one of several films which capitalized on this surging paranoia of government mistrust. All of which created a ripe market for political thriller films.
It is not hard to understand the basis then of a frenzy of conspiracy theories feeding a growing mistrust in government by an increasingly weary American public. involvement in the war and the commencement of the trust crushing Nixon Watergate scandal (1972). A short five years later there was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and Senator Robert Kennedy, both in 1968 the hangover phase of an increasingly unpopular Vietnam War the release of the Pentagon Papers (1971) which contradicted official government press releases pertaining to the U.S. Add to this: the murder of Oswald (televised live) by Jack Ruby (who perished a few years later while in police custody) a hastily revised motorcade route the conflicting details surrounding unnaturally ricocheting bullets a “Badge Man” and the grassy knoll. By the 1970’s, the American public had survived the shocking 1963 assassination of JFK with the implausible Warren Committee conclusion of a lone gunman having committed the deed – a simpleton by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald.
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