How had I never seen... "Three Days of the Condor" or "The Parallax View"?
In this new series, members of Team Film Experience watch and share their reactions to classic films they’ve never seen.
by Lynn Lee
The 1970s may have been a great era for cinema, but they were a pretty lousy time for faith in the great American experiment. Between the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, the Church Committee reports, and of course Watergate, there were seemingly endless reasons to suspect the U.S. government and other institutions meant to serve and protect the public were instead covering up all manner of malfeasance—and that they might be watching you if they thought you were a threat. This generalized paranoia found fertile ground in Hollywood, leading to a spate of conspiracy thrillers of varying quality and goofiness.
Until last month, the only one of these films I’d seen was All the President’s Men (unless you count Chinatown and Network, which I’d argue you could). But something about the social and political tensions of today made these movies seem especially current again. So it seemed like a good occasion to watch two of the most famous examples of the genre: Three Days of the Condor (1975) and A Parallax View (1974)...