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| The Parallax View: a JFK conspiracy film that gets it right | The Parallax View: a JFK conspiracy film that gets it right |
| (4 months later) | |
| Just about the only interesting things about the new Hollywood movie Parkland is its demonstration of how far Hollywood has shifted to the right over the last couple of decades. | Just about the only interesting things about the new Hollywood movie Parkland is its demonstration of how far Hollywood has shifted to the right over the last couple of decades. |
| John F Kennedy was quite a conservative president. He opposed the March on Washington and did little to promote the cause of civil rights, whereas Hollywood celebrities as diverse as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, and Steve McQueen joined the march and heard Martin Luther King discuss his dream. Nevertheless Kennedy's murder sent shockwaves through the liberal Los Angeles community. The humourist Mort Sahl remarked that Kennedy was "shot like a dog on the streets of Dallas, and all of a sudden he had no friends". | John F Kennedy was quite a conservative president. He opposed the March on Washington and did little to promote the cause of civil rights, whereas Hollywood celebrities as diverse as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, and Steve McQueen joined the march and heard Martin Luther King discuss his dream. Nevertheless Kennedy's murder sent shockwaves through the liberal Los Angeles community. The humourist Mort Sahl remarked that Kennedy was "shot like a dog on the streets of Dallas, and all of a sudden he had no friends". |
| After a couple of films in 1967 – the documentary Rush to Judgment and Bruce Conner's experimental short film Report – that critiqued the Warren commission's findings, in 1973 a Hollywood feature called Executive Action arrived. It mixed documentary footage with live action, and portrayed the assassination as a conspiracy by the CIA and big business interests. Executive Action is a decent, strangely low-key film; what's interesting is just how mainstream it was. Burt Lancaster played the CIA coup leader, while Robert Ryan and Will Geer played Texas oil men who want Kennedy dead. Dalton Trumbo, once blacklisted, wrote the script, and the film was directed by David Miller, whose CV contains another good picture, Lonely Are the Brave. | After a couple of films in 1967 – the documentary Rush to Judgment and Bruce Conner's experimental short film Report – that critiqued the Warren commission's findings, in 1973 a Hollywood feature called Executive Action arrived. It mixed documentary footage with live action, and portrayed the assassination as a conspiracy by the CIA and big business interests. Executive Action is a decent, strangely low-key film; what's interesting is just how mainstream it was. Burt Lancaster played the CIA coup leader, while Robert Ryan and Will Geer played Texas oil men who want Kennedy dead. Dalton Trumbo, once blacklisted, wrote the script, and the film was directed by David Miller, whose CV contains another good picture, Lonely Are the Brave. |
| Hollywood later revisited the Kennedy assassination with Winter Kills (1979), based on Richard Condon's paranoid thriller; Ruby (1992), a stumbling biopic about Lee Harvey Oswald's killer Jack Ruby; and most famously in 1991 with JFK, Oliver Stone's epic mega-budget version of events. JFK is a hagiography of Kennedy theorist Jim Garrison, a bombastic New Orleans prosecutor and homophobe who tried to convict a gay CIA associate, Clay Shaw, of the president's murder. Garrison's case was ultimately unconvincing: a jury found Shaw innocent, which undercuts Stone's telling of history. Nevertheless, the film provoked a public outcry and led to the release of thousands of previously secret files by the Assassination Records Review board. | Hollywood later revisited the Kennedy assassination with Winter Kills (1979), based on Richard Condon's paranoid thriller; Ruby (1992), a stumbling biopic about Lee Harvey Oswald's killer Jack Ruby; and most famously in 1991 with JFK, Oliver Stone's epic mega-budget version of events. JFK is a hagiography of Kennedy theorist Jim Garrison, a bombastic New Orleans prosecutor and homophobe who tried to convict a gay CIA associate, Clay Shaw, of the president's murder. Garrison's case was ultimately unconvincing: a jury found Shaw innocent, which undercuts Stone's telling of history. Nevertheless, the film provoked a public outcry and led to the release of thousands of previously secret files by the Assassination Records Review board. |
| For my money, the best JFK conspiracy movie isn't, strictly speaking, about the Kennedy assassination. Made in 1974, Alan J Pakula's The Parallax View borrows from the murders of both Kennedy brothers to tell the tale of a mysterious organisation, the Parallax Corporation, which deals in political assassination and the creation of "lone assassin" patsies. | For my money, the best JFK conspiracy movie isn't, strictly speaking, about the Kennedy assassination. Made in 1974, Alan J Pakula's The Parallax View borrows from the murders of both Kennedy brothers to tell the tale of a mysterious organisation, the Parallax Corporation, which deals in political assassination and the creation of "lone assassin" patsies. |
| Reading on mobile? Click here to view trailer | Reading on mobile? Click here to view trailer |
| The reader will recall that Lee Harvey Oswald, during his brief time in the custody of the Dallas police, denied murdering the president and cried out to reporters: "I'm a patsy! I'm a patsy!" – strange behaviour for someone who, according to Parkland and the Warren Report, killed Kennedy to become famous. The Parallax View, written by David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr and an uncredited Robert Towne, describes how such patsies are created. | The reader will recall that Lee Harvey Oswald, during his brief time in the custody of the Dallas police, denied murdering the president and cried out to reporters: "I'm a patsy! I'm a patsy!" – strange behaviour for someone who, according to Parkland and the Warren Report, killed Kennedy to become famous. The Parallax View, written by David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr and an uncredited Robert Towne, describes how such patsies are created. |
| Pakula was, like David Miller, a mainstream director whose filmography fails to excite. Also like Miller, he has one excellent credit: Klute. In many ways, The Parallax View outshines even that fine thriller. Parallax begins with the murder of a politician on the campaign trail in Seattle's Space Needle, followed by the near-instant death of the alleged assassin. An investigative journalist digs deeper into the seemingly open-and-shut case and masquerades as a malcontented loser-drifter to get "inside" the Parallax Corporation. There are parallels with The Manchurian Candidate, but Parallax is even better than John Frankenheimer's thriller about a programmed assassin – mainly thanks to the lead actor, Warren Beatty, who gives what is possibly the best performance of his career, as a hipster journalist masquerading as a malleable psychotic. | Pakula was, like David Miller, a mainstream director whose filmography fails to excite. Also like Miller, he has one excellent credit: Klute. In many ways, The Parallax View outshines even that fine thriller. Parallax begins with the murder of a politician on the campaign trail in Seattle's Space Needle, followed by the near-instant death of the alleged assassin. An investigative journalist digs deeper into the seemingly open-and-shut case and masquerades as a malcontented loser-drifter to get "inside" the Parallax Corporation. There are parallels with The Manchurian Candidate, but Parallax is even better than John Frankenheimer's thriller about a programmed assassin – mainly thanks to the lead actor, Warren Beatty, who gives what is possibly the best performance of his career, as a hipster journalist masquerading as a malleable psychotic. |
| There are multiple twists and pitfalls. Created at a time when Hollywood still dared to challenge the "official" version of events, this is not a feel-good film. Instead, it's one of the high points of the New American Cinema, that brief decade when American film was still an art form – and a challenging, subversive art form at that. | There are multiple twists and pitfalls. Created at a time when Hollywood still dared to challenge the "official" version of events, this is not a feel-good film. Instead, it's one of the high points of the New American Cinema, that brief decade when American film was still an art form – and a challenging, subversive art form at that. |
| That period was a far cry from sorry 2013, when Tom Hanks produces pointless films like Parkland and does voiceovers for the Pentagon-friendly National WWII War Museum, in New Orleans. | That period was a far cry from sorry 2013, when Tom Hanks produces pointless films like Parkland and does voiceovers for the Pentagon-friendly National WWII War Museum, in New Orleans. |
| Alex Cox is introducing a screening of The Parallax View on 20 November at Curzon, Soho, in London. His book The President & The Provocateur (Oldcastle) is out now | Alex Cox is introducing a screening of The Parallax View on 20 November at Curzon, Soho, in London. His book The President & The Provocateur (Oldcastle) is out now |
| • All Alex von Tunzelmann's Reel History assessments of the JFK films | • All Alex von Tunzelmann's Reel History assessments of the JFK films |
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