Out of Their Depth: The Parallax View

Conspiracy and creeping paranoia seeps through every frame of this film, 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 in Seattle’s Space Needle - 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.

_______

Out of Their Depth

Following the cultural upheaval and racial tensions of the 1960s, the early ‘70s saw America increasingly in social and political turmoil as opposition to the Vietnam War grew more violent following revelations of the brutality of American forces whilst at home the full scale of the Watergate scandal was beginning to be revealed. The certainties of modern American values were not only tarnished they were found to be mired in corruption, scandal and lies.

This heightened unease in the mainstream American psyche was reflected in films from the New Hollywood of the period where the traditional male hero of the classic studio era was replaced by a protagonist who, whilst they thought they were in control, found themselves increasingly out of their depth.

This season is curated by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.