The Parallax View
Our Price: $49.46
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $11.69 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Hume Cronyn, Kenneth Mars, Walter McGinn, Warren Beatty, William DanielsDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-06-22
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Paramount
Movie Reviews of The Parallax View
Movie Review: "Parallax Gets Short Shrifted on DVD" (Contains A "Spoiler")
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Parallax View," Alan J Pakula's classic 70's paranoid conpiracy thriller, gets the shortest of DVD shrifts from Paramount Home Video.
Save for a well done trailer, there are NO extras, not even English subtitles for us dialouge freaks.
Warren Beatty, in one of his coolest movie star turns, plays Joe Frady, a "third rate journalist from Oregon" who stumbles onto a massive conspiracy run by the shadowy Parallax Organization who represented in the film by the late, great character actor Walter Mc Ginn, is "in the business of recruiting assasssins."
What makes "Parallax" even more menacing is that the screenplay gives this assassination bureau no particular political bent...both liberal and conservative presidential hopefuls are targeted.
It may be interesting to note that two screenplays for "Parallax" were commissioned (the first by Lorenzo Semple Jr, the second by David Giler) and rejected.
The material that was actually shot was heavily re written by Pakula, Beatty and allegedly by an uncredited Robert Towne during a Hollywood writer's strike in the spring of 1974.
Hence the Beatty character, originally written as a small town cop, becomes a rogue investigative reporter with a talent for "creative irresponsibility,"-- according to a new biogrpahy of Pakula, much of the screenplay was still being written as the film was shot.
Aside from Pakula's remarkable contributions, much of the impact of "Parallax" comes from Gordon Willis' cinematography (Beatty's character is dwarfed by the large glass and steel high rise that houses Parallax's "Division of Human Engineering), and by the late Michael Small's minimilast score--the Parallax murders are heralded by a creepy, recurring anthem.
"Parallax View" released in June of 1974, two months before the Nixon resignation, was a box office failure, owing to the fact perhaps that Paramount put all its promotional efforts into "Chinatown," a personal production of then studio head Robert Evans.
It's lack of commercial success was probably due in larger part that the film was a slice of unrelenting paranoid perversity--Beatty's reporter hero is defeated by the conspiracy and his character is both killed and framed 'Oswald-like' for the film's last assassination--Beatty would return to the screen, more truee to type, a few months later as a Beverly Hills hairdresser who beds every woman on the West Coast.
"Parallax View" cries out for a 2 disc special edition, such as Warner Brothers is giving another Pakula conspiracy film, "All The President's Men" in late February.
Pakula's gone but perhaps Beatty could be coaxed out of his mountain hideaway to do a commentary and some of those researchers who put together the material for the Parallax employment test (one of the great moments in movie history)might make themselves available. Pakula reportedly spent four months putting together this powerful and divertingly amazing sequence.
Extra note of trivia: Earl Hindman, the actor who plays the redneck deputy who picks a fight with Beatty in a small town bar, was the voice of Tim Allen's next door neighbor in "Home Improvement."
Similar DVD Movies
The Last DetailSony; Release date: 1999-12-14; DVD
Best price: $8.45
Price in other shops:
The Manchurian Candidate (Special Edition)Release date: 2004-07-13; DVD
Best price: $6.88
Price in other shops:
McCabe & Mrs. MillerWarner Brothers; Release date: 2002-06-04; DVD
Best price: $5.19
Price in other shops:
The Day of the JackalUNI DIST CORP. (MCA); Release date: 1998-04-29; DVD
Best price: $4.91
Price in other shops:
The Dead Zone (Special Collector's Edition)ADAMS,BROOKE; Release date: 2006-09-26; DVD
Best price: $22.40
Reds (Special 25th Anniversary Edition)PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2006-10-17; DVD
Best price: $13.83
Price in other shops:
All the President's Men (Two-Disc Special Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2006-02-21; DVD
Best price: $4.65
Price in other shops:
Marathon ManMarathon; Release date: 2001-08-28; DVD
Best price: $14.99
KluteWarner Brothers; Release date: 2002-02-05; DVD
Best price: $5.98
Price in other shops:
Three Days of the CondorREDFORD,ROBERT; Release date: 1999-08-17; DVD
Best price: $8.99