The Parallax View (1974)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Joseph Frady	Warren Beatty	½
Editor Edgar Rintels	Hume Cronyn
Austin Tucker	William Daniels
Lee Carter	Paula Prentiss
Agent Turner	Kenneth Mars

Review

This thematic predecessor to the Pakula-team's greater success, All the President't Men two years later, is a bit more audacious and far-out. The script by David Giler and Lorenzo Semple is clever and has a lot to offer, but it is also a relentlessly pessimistic downward spiral that leaves the exciting ambiguity of paranoia vs. actual peril a bit too early. However, the direction is skillful and stylish with some great visual segments (including the two brilliantly staged board announcements, and the suggestive Parallax-test), and - of course - the film has Warren Beatty - in a sensual, era-defining, trendsetting performance that more than anything underlined his intellectual playboy persona. Beatty even makes a barfight seem cerebral and fashionable, and he delivers lines in a way that makes you long for the seventies. Which in retrospect is much of what this film is about.