The Parallax View (1974)

	Director: Alan J. Pakula	COUNTRY USA GENRE Thriller/Mystery NORWEGIAN TITLE Siste vitne RUNNING TIME 102 minutes
	Producer: Alan J. Pakula
	Screenwriter (based on the novel by Loren Singer): David Giler Lorenzo Semple, Jr.

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Joseph Frady	Warren Beatty	½
Editor Edgar Rintels	Hume Cronyn
Austin Tucker	William Daniels
Lee Carter	Paula Prentiss
Agent Turner	Kenneth Mars

Review

This thematic predecessor to Alan J. Pakula's greater success All the President's Men two years later is more audacious and outlandish. The script by David Giler and Lorenzo Semple Jr. is clever and has a lot on offer, but it is also a relentlessly pessimistic downward spiral that leaves the exciting ambiguity of paranoia vs. actual peril a bit too early. Still, the direction is skilful and stylish, with some great visual segments (including two brilliantly staged board announcements and the suggestive Parallax test), and – of course – the film has Warren Beatty – in a sensual, era-defining, trendsetting performance that helped shape his intellectual playboy persona. Beatty even makes a bar fight seem cerebral and fashionable, and he delivers lines in a way that makes you long for the ’70s – which, in retrospect, is much of what this film is about.