Conspiracy and creeping paranoia seeps through every frame of Alan J Pakula’s
The Parallax View even the architecture and the soundtrack communicate
dissonance and unease. Made two years before Pakula’s definitive Watergate film
All the President’s Men, here Warren Beatty is a reporter who becomes caught up in
the fall out from seeing a Presidential candidate assassination - a shockingly
dramatic opening sequence. Unlike the fearlessly heroic journalists Woodward and
Bernstein as played by Redford and Hoffman, Beatty’s reporter is drawn deeper into
the corporate and political conspiracy enveloping him leading to an ending that does
not result in exposure but rather echoes Chinatown’s devastating conclusion.
Cinematographer Gordon Willis’ coolly stylized compositions give visual expression to
a mood of the pervasive sense of dread and mistrust that defined the 1970s.
A 2K restoration c/o Park Circus and Paramount Pictures. The 35mm original colour
negative was scanned in 4K in 2021; remastered in 2K by Criterion; 2K DCP created
by Paramount. DCP has the original mono audio soundtrack.
