Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 293: Tue Oct 20

The Parallax View (Pakula, 1974): Close-Up Cinema, 8pm


This movie, which is also being shown on 14th October and 1st November, is part of the New Hollywood season at Close-Up Cinema through September and October. You can find all the details for the film's screenings here. The screenings will be from a 35mm print.

Time out review:
A thriller about a journalist, alerted to the mysterious deaths of witnesses to the assassination of a presidential candidate, who embarks on an investigation that reveals a nebulous conspiracy of gigantic and all-embracing scope. It sounds familiar, and refers to or overlaps a good handful of similar films, but is most relevantly tied to Klute. Where Klute was an exploration of claustrophobic anxiety, The Parallax View is inexorably agoraphobic. Its visual organisation is stunning as the journalist (Beatty) is drawn into an increasingly nightmarish world characterised by impenetrably opaque structures, a screen whited out from time to time, or meshed over with visually deceptive patterns. It is some indication of the area the film explores that in place of the self-revealing session with the analyst in Klute, The Parallax View presents us with the more insecurity-inducing questionnaire used by the mysterious Parallax Corporation for personality-testing prospective employees. Excellent performances; fascinating film.
Verina Glaessner

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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