The Parallax View

Mark Campbell

ISBN 10: 1839026308 / ISBN 13: 9781839026300

Editore: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, GB, 2024

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Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View (1974) is a renowned example of the paranoid conspiracy thriller, a genre that was a marker of the 1970s. The period was haunted by the murders of John F Kennedy (1963), Malcolm X (1965), Martin Luther King (1968), and Robert Kennedy (1968), together with the crimes of the Manson family, Altamont, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal. Mark Campbell's study of the film situates it within this historical moment of increasing paranoia and conspiracy, analyzing the ways in which it not only reflected, but also actively constructed, this febrile worldview. He contextualizes the film as an adaptation of Loren Singer's 1970 pulp novel by the same name, and highlights the role of influential cinematographer, Gordon Willis, in constructing the visual style that was essential to the filmic representation of paranoia. Focusing on the film itself, Campbell provides a detailed analysis of key scenes, particularly the central six-minute brainwashing sequence which featured imagery drawn from pop culture, advertising slogans, and violent imagery. He examines Pakula's use of the film-within-a-film visual trope, and how the scene refers to the then widely-held suspicion that television and mass media were tools of psychological "conditioning", highlighting how this concern was reflective of new anxieties about corporate and media power.

Codice articolo LU-9781839026300

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: The Parallax View
• Editore: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, GB
• Data di pubblicazione: 2024
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1839026308
• ISBN 13: 9781839026300
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Condizione: New

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

A study of of Alan J. Pakula's paranoid conspiracy thriller The Parallax View (1974), in the BFI Film Classics series.

Informazioni sull?autore

Mark Campbell is Professor of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, UK. He is the author of the BFI Film Classic on The Parallax View (2024) and is a former editor of the Journal of Architecture and former managing editor of Grey Room (MIT Press).