The Parallax View : BFI Film Classics - Mark Campbell

The Parallax View

By: Mark Campbell

Paperback | 12 December 2024

At a Glance

Paperback


$26.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $6.75 with

Available: 12th December 2024

Preorder. Will ship when available.

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.

More in Specific Films

Don't Look Back, You'll Trip Over : My Guide to Life - Michael Caine
Accidentally Wes Anderson : The viral sensation - Wally Koval

RRP $69.99

$47.25

32%
OFF
Spider-Man : Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie - Ramin Zahed
David Bowie. The Man Who Fell to Earth. : 40th Edition - Paul Duncan
Studio Ghibli : Architecture in Animation - Studio Ghibli
The Art of Miyazaki's Spirited Away : The Art of Spirited Away - Hayao Miyazaki
AidaIro Illustrations : Toilet-bound Hanako-kun - AidaIro

RRP $63.99

$31.95

50%
OFF
Studio Ghibli: The Complete Works : Second Edition - Studio Ghibli
Architecture, Film, and the In-between : Spatio-Cinematic Betwixt - Vahid Vahdat
BoJack Horseman : The Art Before the Horse - Chris McDonnell

RRP $59.99

$41.25

31%
OFF
The Art of Haikyu!! : Endings and Beginnings - Haruichi Furudate

RRP $70.00

$47.35

32%
OFF
My Neighbor Totoro Film Comic : All-in-One Edition - Hayao Miyazaki
Filming the First : Cinematic Portrayals of Freedom of the Press - Helen J. Knowles
Pop Stars on Film : Popular Culture in a Global Market - Kirsty Fairclough
After Cinema : Storytelling in Contemporary Media Art - Heinz Peter Schwerfel
The Art of Princess Mononoke : A Film by Hayao Miyazaki - Hayao Miyazaki
Feminism and the Cinema of Experience - Lori Jo Marso