The Parallax View

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The Parallax View (1974), directed by Alan J. Pakula, mirrors some elements we find in Alfred Hitchcock’s films. There are deaths at the Seattle Space Needle, which is an iconic American landmark. Hitchcock showed treachery occurring at the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur and at Mt. Rushmore in North by Northwest. The point of using these types of settings for Hitchcock was to suggest that there is a sinister aspect below the admirable surface representation. However, Pakula said in an interview that he wanted to show how modern structures dwarf individual citizens. In a way, the larger structures show how powerful forces can dominate the less fortunate. Hitchcock also used the theme of those in power blaming an innocent man for wrongs he did not commit, and that individual tries to discover the truth below a surface of lies. This element also exists in this story.

The word “parallax” adds to the theme of seeing things from various perspectives. The word means that a variety of people can see the same situation in different ways. In the case of the main character, Joseph Frady (Warren Beatty), a journalist, he is an outsider who views the world as something to analyze below the surface of appearances. Others see him as an anti-establishment type, someone outside the mainstream. The fact that he is a recovering alcoholic adds to his outsider status. His name suggests the word “afraid.” Is he afraid of what’s happening, or is he, too, someone to be afraid of.

The opening sequence shows a totem pole with the Space Needle behind it to show how society has minimized a meaningful culture by replacing it with impersonal materialism. Senator Carroll (William Boyce) is in a parade wearing a fireman’s hat, a symbol of unselfish heroism. Inside the Space Needel one waiter appears to be the assassin of a senator while another waiter is the actual killer. This scene stresses how things are not what they seem. Both Frady and his ex-girlfriend, Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), are there. The innocent man falls to his death as others wrongfully assume he is the culprit, and he falls to his death after a pursuit. What follows is a commission that declares there was a lone gunman. The declaration is not a press conference, so there are no questions, stressing how no contradictions will be voiced against the conclusion that there was no conspiracy. This element of the film reminds us of the Warren Commission which said there was no conspiracy in the killing of President John F. Kennedy. It also refers to similar findings that were made in the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Senator Carroll is an independent politician who may want to run for a higher office. IMDb notes that his name is the same as a signer of The Declaration of Independence, the last word there mirroring the senator’s nonpartisan status. His link to the Declaration paints him as a patriot like those at the pristine birth of American democracy. The fact that the opening takes place on Independence Day stresses Carroll’s “independence” and ironically contrasts with those defiling the tenets of the Founding Fathers.

Three years pass since the death of the senator, and we are witness to Frady’s anti-establishment combativeness. He argues and insults local policemen following his manipulation of an inept arrest where he exposes how they harass him. Frady’s newspaper editor, Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn), tells Frady he must “curb your talent for creative irresponsibility,” and that they are “in the business of reporting the news, not creating it.” The scene emphasizes Frady’s rebellious nature. Rintel’s office looks like an old-fashioned modest space, which he never seems to leave, not gleaming like a modern press headquarters. Pakula said Rintels is an “anachronism,” a man dedicated to “old-fashioned decency and optimism.” He seems to be someone who is isolated from the current society that has moved away from those values.

Lee has tried to contact Frady and shows up at his home by way of a side entrance, stressing her fear, which she reveals to Frady. She says that eight people have died who were at the event at the top of the Space Needle. She believes they were killed, and she could be next. Frady dismisses Lee’s fear because she is a neurotic who apparently had paranoid and suicidal thoughts in the past. He does learn that there have been two more deaths, and that Carroll’s aid, Austin Tucker (William Daniels) also believes there is a conspiracy.

The next scene is chilling as there is a shot of Lee’s body at the coroner’s building. She had alcohol and barbiturates in her system and died in a car accident. Frady is the last one to come into view through the doorway, which is the audience’s viewpoint, stressing the different ways things are seen, and we can see that he now believes there is something suspicious about the piling up of bodies.

Frady meets with Will (Kenneth Mars), an ex-FBI agent, who says that there is a pill that can fake a heart attack, which is how one of the persons in Seattle scene died. This fact is a foreshadowing of what happens later. Frady says he needs a fake backstory that shows him as a “hostile misfit.” Will says Frady doesn’t have to fake that. Again, we see that Frady, in his own way, fits the profile of those he is hunting. Will says they will set him up to be a man who was once a flasher so as to present him as a person with an embarrassing past to hide, which is the kind of person an organization grooming assassins might recruit. The two are at an amusement park and ride on a children’s train. Could the film be suggesting Frady is on the right track?

Frady visits the place in upstate Washington where a witness to the senator’s death died. He does not look like the locals since he has long shaggy hair and orders milk at a local bar where the male patrons dress like cowboys. A man named Red (Earl Hindman, eventually Wilson in the TV show Home Improvement) questions his masculinity. Unfortunately, Frady must prove his male strength and gets into a fight, eventually knocking out Red, who turns out to be a deputy. Sheriff Wicker (Kelly Thorsden) is one of the patrons, allowing the fight to continue. As Frady says he has a strange way of enforcing the law. The town is outside the mainstream idea of what normally stands for justice, and Frady is the outsider again here, showing his aggressive nature.

The conspiracy widens in the scene where the sheriff takes Frady to the spot below a dam where the witness died. The hugeness of the dam adds to that feeling of individuals overpowered by their surroundings. It was reported as a drowning since the dam sluice opened and the victim drowned. Then the alarm sounds which warns that the sluice is opening again and Frady realizes he will be the next victim. Luckily (a bit of contrivance) Frady has a fishing rod and he hits the sheriff who is pulling a gun, which is how he presumably killed the witness. They are both swept away. Frady survives, but not the sheriff. So, even local law enforcement is part of the deadly apparatus that lurks behind the façade of respectability. (This scene is a bit much since it would seem pretty suspicious that two witnesses to the senator’s death would have died in the same manner at the same location).

Frady goes to the sheriff’s house and discovers a briefcase that provides information about the Parallax Corporation. He escapes the pursuing Red in the sheriff’s police car which he used to get to the house. It is interesting that he must escape the shady local lawman in a car belonging to an officer of the law. Frady is even wearing the cop’s cowboy hat. He drives through an area that spews mud on the car and himself, implying that justice has been defiled. The images add irony to the scene.

Back in Portland, Rintels doesn’t buy Frady’s story, since he reveals that the sheriff and deputy were involved in a utility scandal and that is why they were hostile. Frady said he didn’t reveal he was a reporter and used a fake name. Rintels refuses to help Frady, which adds to the journalist’s isolation.

The briefcase contains psychological testing questions, which Frady brings to a psychology lab. The psychologist says the questions seek “to pull out anger, repression, frustration” which could identify homicidal tendencies. The psychologist has a man who committed gruesome crimes take the test. Frady wants to pretend the answers are his so he can infiltrate the Parallax Company. Apparently, the only way to enter a deceptive organization is by being deceptive.

The depth of the danger facing people who suspect the truth about the recent deaths manifests itself in the person of Autin Tucker, the dead senator’s aid. He learns about Frady’s search for him. He requires Frady to undergo a strip search before meeting him. He warns him that he is unaware of the enormity of the deadly investigation he is pursuing since he has escaped two attempts on his own life. At the dam and here, we have foreshadowing of what can happen to Frady. Tucker, a bodyguard, and Frady go out on a boat. In the water, alone, one would think it was a safe place. Not so. There is an explosion on the vessel, and again, Frady happens luckily to be at the bow of the ship and is blown free. The scene shows how pervasive is the reach of this conspiracy.

Frady revisits Rintels, who thinks the reporter died on the boat. Rintels is onboard with Frady’s news story now, but Frady doesn’t want to print anything yet so he can find out more. He wants to make it look like he did die so as to call off any further scrutiny. He asks Rintels to print his obituary, make a fake will, and appear to be clearing out Frady’s personal property. In the meantime, Frady will take on a false identity under the name of Richard Paley, the man who supposedly answered the Parallax questionnaire, and a potential assassin. He is putting himself in jeopardy, but also Rintels, since he is the only one who knows the truth, which is supposed to set you free, but, in this world, can get one killed.

Frady takes a room in a rundown building to show his outsider status as Paley. When a representative, Jack Younger (Walter McGinn) of Parallax shows up, Frady acts surly and angry when his pot on a hotplate overheats. Younger says it’s his aggressiveness is what makes Paley valuable. Is Frady putting on an act, or is he just unleashing his inner antisocial tendencies?

Frady goes to the address where Parallax does its recruiting. He visits the “Division of Human Engineering.” It’s an ominous title, implying that they can remake individuals into something other than what they currently are. What follows is an almost an extended surreal scene. Frady goes to a large auditorium (that dwarfing feeling again) where there is just one chair which measures his emotional responses to the images projected through his fingers. Words such as “country,” “love” and “enemy” appear with images of people suffering and imprisoned along with patriotic pictures accompanied by rousing as well as soft music. Also, there are still shots of a KKK rally, Hitler, and violent pictures along with an illustration of a comic superhero. The word that appears often is “Me.” The visuals seem to connect patriotism and family love with the individual’s ability to conquer adversaries. It is interesting that we do not gain any knowledge of Frady’s response to these images. Does he actually qualify as a person who fits in with the parallax view of those who will hire him? Here again we have a Hitchcock element since the audience is made to participate in the scene just as does Frady. In his essay, “Dark Towers,” Nathan Heller says that Pakula uses the camera as a “human” who “feels like a bystander.” So, in effect, we also are taking the test.

An effective suspenseful segment follows. Frady sees the man who Tucker showed him a picture of who was at the Space Needle. He was the actual second gunman who killed Senator Carroll. Frady follows the man, who has acquired a briefcase, to the airport. The man checks in the briefcase but doesn’t get on the plane. Frady boards the plane and hears that there is a senator on the plane who the newspaper compares to Carroll. Frady realizes the briefcase contains a bomb. Frady is able to warn a flight attendant anonymously by writing on a cocktail napkin that there is an explosive onboard. The plane turns around based on “technical difficulties” to avoid a panic. After the plane lands and everyone disembarks, the plane explodes. Frady performed a daring and courageous act here.

Younger is at Frady’s apartment when he returns. The man is in the dark mirroring his shady personality. He knows that Paley is not his name based on background checks. Frady makes up a story about hiding his alcoholic past. He is supposed to meet another operative at a hotel, but once more Frady sabotages another job Parallax is planning by sending his supposed associate away. We know Parallax is onto Frady because they send that same assassin to bring Rintels poisoned food which he regularly orders from a deli. They make it look like the editor died of a heart attack, as did a previous victim. More appearances being deceptive. The audiotape of the conversation with Younger that Frady sent Rintels along with other Parallax documents are gone. Frady doesn’t know about the death and that he is now on his own.

Frady goes to see Younger at the Parallax building. The man is not there but Frady sees the same waiter/assassin in the lobby. He follows him again, this time to the LA Convention Center. The large open area, said Pakula, was meant to seem uninviting and menacing, which fits in with the spatial intimidation theme of the story. What Frady doesn’t realize, and what the viewer doesn’t suspect at this point, is that he is being set up. Younger and other suited men are there as they observe from a room high above the floor below, like demonic angels watching their plans take shape. Younger leaves, absent from, and seemingly innocent of, the treachery that follows.

There is a college marching band rehearsing patriotic songs among a multitude of tables. On the floor students show placards of various past presidents. It’s almost a reminder of what Frady saw at the Parallax human engineering site. What will follow is anything but traditional patriotism.

The killer along with other assassins are on a platform above the proceedings below. Senator Hammond (Jim Davis) rides in on a golf cart as he is part of the rehearsal for a speech he will deliver that night. Frady is on a catwalk above the floor. He probably realizes that the senator is the next target. Sure enough, as the senator drives his golf car away from the stage, shots ring out and he is killed. The senator’s golf cart careens into the red, white, and blue tables, symbolizing the destruction of the patriotic scene.

The assassins planted a rifle to implicate Frady as the shooter. The band members see Frady and point at him, assuming he is the killer. It is the same setup that occurred at the Space Needle. As Frady runs toward a door to escape he is shot to death by an assassin who is masquerading as a security guard.

We again have an investigative panel that concludes that Frady killed Hammond. They state that Frady was obsessed with the Carroll shooting, thought Senator Hammond was responsible for the other senator’s death, and that he felt Hammond was out to kill Frady. Again, there are no questions from an unseen press, which implies that even they are impotent to stop the coverup. The lone gunman theory with no conspiracy decision is again presented, with history repeating itself, as it did with the Kennedy and King assassinations. The feeling that all of these decisions are linked is stressed by the camera zooming in on the commission members at the first panel and now the camera pulling away at the second commission, as if it is all one shot taking place at the same time.

The depressing ending concludes this cautionary tail of how even in a supposed open and free society, there can be a deceptive underbelly lurking beneath the benign appearing surface. (For conspiracy theorists, the actor who played Younger (McGinn) died in a car accident in 1977, and director Pakula died in an auto accident in 1998).