The Parallax View
Movie, 1974, Named by critics, Set in Second in the trilogy
The Parallax View is #10 of 48 in release order and #17 of 48 in chronological order in the Spiritual Trilogies.
The story
An ambitious reporter gets in trouble while investigating a senator's assassination which leads to a vast conspiracy involving a multinational corporation behind every event in the world's headlines.
The Parallax View recap
Senator Charles Carroll is shot dead at the top of Seattle's Space Needle. A committee rules that a lone gunman did it, but over the next three years six witnesses die. One of them, the TV reporter Lee Carter, begs her ex-boyfriend Joe Frady, a newspaper reporter, for help, and is soon found dead of an apparent overdose. Frady digs into the death of another witness in a small town, is held at gunpoint beside a dam by a sheriff, who drowns when the floodgates open, and finds papers from the Parallax Corporation, which recruits security staff through a personality test. A professor tells him the test screens for violent misfits. Frady takes it with answers designed to pass, and Parallax brings him in. He fakes his own death, watches a disturbing montage meant to condition recruits, and follows a Parallax operative who plants a bomb on a plane. The middle chapter of Pakula's Paranoia Trilogy, it turns the assassination thriller into a study of an organisation no one can see.
The Parallax View ending explained
Parallax kills Frady and frames him for a senator's murder. Following the operative, Frady slips into an arena where Senator George Hammond is rehearsing for a rally. Hammond is shot from the catwalks above. Frady finds himself up there near a dropped rifle as security rushes in, realises he has been set up as the assassin, and runs for a doorway, where a figure shoots him dead. Six months later the same kind of committee announces that Frady acted alone, closing the case.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
Where to watch The Parallax View
The Parallax View is streaming on Kanopy and Hoopla in the US. You can rent or buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.
Ratings
IMDb 7.1/10, Rotten Tomatoes 87%
Where it fits
- Release order: after Klute, before The Tenant.
- Chronological order: after Klute, before All the President's Men.
Cast
- Warren Beatty as Joseph Frady
- Paula Prentiss as Lee Carter
- William Daniels as Austin Tucker
- Walter McGinn as Jack Younger
- Hume Cronyn as Bill Rintels
- Kelly Thordsen as Sheriff L.D. Wicker
- Chuck Waters as Thomas Richard Linder
- Earl Hindman as Deputy Red
- William Joyce as Senator Charles Carroll
- Betty Murray as Mrs. Charles Carroll
- Bill McKinney as Parallax Assassin
- Jo Ann Harris as Chrissy - Frady's Girl
Directed by Alan J. Pakula.