Paranoiac Nostalgia
Growing up in the early 1970s was the great days of conspiracy theory. Whether it was ancient astronauts or alien autopsies, the Lock Ness monster or Jack the Ripper, the wilder the conjecture, the more it entered popular culture. My personal favorite was the Illuminatus! trilogy, three paperbacks written by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. A crazy mixture of John Dillinger's preserved penis in the National Archive, the hippie drug culture, and around one hundred characters finally ending up in Dealey Plaza to watch the JFK assassination, it was designed solely to blow all your pre-conceptions to smithereens.
Leonard Nemoy's dark voice was always welcome, 'In Search of...' beaming into our living room, detailing yet another cockamamie theory. Watergate was happening, as were the Pentagon Papers. We were slowly coming to the realization that our government was perhaps not always working to out benefit. And nowhere was this feeling more self-evident than in the series of assassinations that rocked America in the 1960s, particularly the 1963 John F. Kennedy Assassination.
I'm not going to open the Kennedy Assassination can of worms. There's is no way that I or anyone else can solve the murder of the President at this late date. The death of JFK has gone from tragedy to suspicion to mystery to controversy. Now it is entertainment, thousands of books and documentaries not only covering the subject as fact but as fiction as well. My personal favorite is 'American Tabloid' by James Ellroy, the NY Times Book-of-the-Year for 2000, but there are many to chose from.
Whatever your opinion of the Kennedy Assassination may be, the one provable fact is that the Warren Commission was one bungled and slanted investigation. It is the classic case of fitting the evidence to the conclusion when any proper investigation is supposed to be run in the opposite direction, fitting the conclusion to the facts. The destruction of evidence during the most important criminal case in American history alone is mind boggling. It left the door open for counter arguments that have not been answered to this day.
What I really want to get to is a series of three movies released in the 1970s in America that reflect the JFK murder, all refracted takes on the national paranoia and suspicion that was growing rapidly during the decade. The films are 'Executive Action' (1973), 'The Parallax View' (1974), and 'Winter Kills' (1979), and they show an increasingly complex view of American politics. The first one is nearly a documentary, while the third is hallucinatory. How did things get so far out of hand?
The 1960's had really invented the paranoid movie, with 'The Manchurian Candidate' being perhaps Ground Zero, although the loser heroes of Film Noir certainly pointed the way. The director of 'The Manchurian Candidate', John Frankenheimer, made a trilogy of paranoia films that decade, along with 'Seven Days in May', about a military takeover of the White House, and 'Seconds', a descent into identity removal and madness. All three are great films but are once removed from current events.
'The Manchurian Candidate' did use recent politics such as the McCarthy witch hunt and the televised political debates of 1960 as plot points, again once removed. It was the infamous political assassination with a high powered rifle from a vantage point used at the conclusion of the plot, a prediction that caused producer Frank Sinatra to pull the movie from circulation of a quarter century, that makes that movie a landmark. That hit too close to home, prophetic, not reportage. 'Seven Days In May', in production on November 22, 1963, detailed the Military Industrial Complex trying to overthrow a 'weak' President. Conspiracy theorists have thrown that into the JFK assasination mix frequently.
One of the stars of 'Seven Days in May', Burt Lancaster, was the driving force behind "Executive Action, and he received financial help from co-star Kirk Douglas. This film was the first time in American mass culture there was a serious challenge to the Warren Commission, going beyond either Mark Lane or Jim Garrison and actually making it to movie theaters for a month before being pulled by the distributor, not appearing again until it showed on up television around fifteen years later. It was an attempt by the generation contemporary to JFK to deal with the murder.
The biggest draw to the movie, besides giving the official verdict two stiff middle fingers, was in getting Dalton Trumbo to write the script. Trumbo, famously blacklisted and then redeemed, was the dean of American screen writers at that time. He came in with no agenda, not being a conspiracy buff. His screenplay is both sober and very clear, a detailed description of the events and politics behind the killing of a President. Along with a few big name Hollywood stars a little past their prime, most notably Lancaster, Robert Ryan and Will Geer, it is the non-exploitative nature of the film that is its strongest asset.
The budget was around that of a typical Roger Corman movie, and Dick Miller even shows up as one of the shooters. Lancaster is in button down mode, very somber and determined, not flashy at all. Much of the plot is given over to the details in the execution, while the other half details convincing a rich Texas Oil magnate to give the go-ahead. Afterwards, there is an even more paranoid conclusion. Overall, it is a little stodgy but very on point.
Critical reaction was harsh despite the fact that no US government entity was directly connected with this plot. The movie lasted less than a month in the theaters then disappeared. Considering the extremely sober and somber tone, it is hard today to see what all the fuss was about. The most important thing is the fact that the movie even got made. It was a great starting arguement, going point by point in repudiating the official (and improbable) story. This is the last time sobriety will be noted.
'The Parallax View' was a more contemporary film with a more contemporary star, Warren Beatty. It is also vastly more entertaining, with some great set pieces. It fits in well between 'Three Days of the Condor', another excellent political paranoid thriller, and 'All the President's Men', which in fact was the director's (Alan J. Paluka) next film. Still not getting a huge budget, it was filmed in Seattle and uses the location well, especially in the opening assassination at the Space Needle.
It also has the highest IMDB rating of the three films in discussion and it was distributed by Paramount, doing okay during initial release and winding up on television within three years. It is especially noted for the orientation film segment, a wonderfully effective short industrial film embedded into the plot which has to be seen to be believed. Here is an excellent article about the use of montage:
The film ends with a set piece that stands as perhaps 1970's paranoia and existentialism at it's best. My only complaint is the present of Warren Beatty, who, with his Jay Sebring haircut and designer jeans, always remains a sex symbol, never disappearing into the role. Beatty is not a favorite actor of mine, despite making a few very good movies. Here, he gets the opportunity to sleep with women and have John Wayne-style fist fights, trying hard to pretend to be a psychopath but not succeeding. Still, the movie works well despite his presence and still packs a punch.
The story is once removed, trying to imagine the machinations behind an assassination network, but strictly from a corporate viewpoint. The movie is uneven, with some embarrassing macho moment for Beatty, but excellent performances from Hume Cronyn and William Daniels. Most especially, the montage above shows how emotions can be ripped apart solely by a series of images and remains perhaps the best example of such a technique ever attempted. And the movie never gets close to be boring. I give Beatty credit for making a star vehicle that was that crazy and treated the main protagonist so badly at the end.
My favorite of the batch, although not the highest rated by others, is 'Winter Kills', filmed in 1975 and 1976 but not released until 1979. I can see why it is a polarizing film; it starts out with the type of shock that comes at the end of 'The Parallax View' and only escalates from there. If you are looking for a linear plot or resolution, you will be disappointed. The film is a Gordian Knot, constantly unfolding upon itself, never revealing any final truths, just a series of betrayals and misinformation. Richard Condor wrote the book on which this movie was based, and he also wrote 'The Manchurian Candidate'. It is on my bucket list to read one day. I am sure that there are major differences in the plot and it has to make more sense than the movie.
The film starts on an oil barge, a huge space, and the sense of living in an oversized world continues until the conclusion, a huge American flag being symbolically ripped in two. Jeff Bridges may be the star, but he is always the most naive and least intelligent person in every room. He tries to investigate the death of his brother, who was President of the United States. Yet even with the help of his father, a billionaire played to perfection by John Huston, he never seems to get anywhere.
The movie seems like an exercise in futility until the end, when things get seriously tragic. Some call it a black comedy, but I consider it a dream-logic nightmare. By now, America is eating its young, and everybody is involved in the conspiracy. This is helped by the numerous cameos in the movie, some of which work - Eli Wallach, Tomas Milian -and some of which are wasted, such as Elizabeth Taylor and Toshiro Mufune. The plot is episodic, with innumerable small segments piling on top of each other.
The production itself is among the most notorious of the 1970's; the producers were big time drug dealers who were perpetually short of cash, and the film went bankrupt three separate times in three separate locations. One of the producers was sentenced to 40 years for pot smuggling, while the other was executed fourteen days before the film premiered, a bullet to the back of the head. Richard Condon claimed in a magazine article that the two made their money dealing coke. Each of the star cameos required an individual shoot to accommodate the crazy scheduling.
It is a testament to Jeff Bridges and the director, William Richert, that they stuck with the project until completion. I saw it in the movie theater but it was considered a box office bomb. Now it is a popular cult item. To me, it stands as a symbol of the Kennedy death investigations, convoluted and somewhat indecipherable, a story that you can never quite get to the bottom of or figure out the truth of the matter.
What started out as a sober examination in 'Executive Action' had turned into dream logic by 'Winter Kills', a sign that America was dazed and confused by the end of that tumultuous decade, ready for the warm lies of the Reagan era. In today's environment of 'fake news' and alternative facts, we are living in the world of 'Winter Kills'. What started out as a reflection on the past has somehow turned into our present day reality. God help us all.
Oliver Stone blew these three movies out of the water with his masterful 'JFK'. He packed his statement on the Kennedy Assassination just as full of bullshit as the Warren Report had; it was a huge hit and extremely controversial. It was also very well made, with especially fantastic editing in the use of white. The tone and even the music harkens back to 'Executive Action', except that unlike the three movies from the 1970s, he places the blame of the President's death squarely on governmental forces. That's when the shit really hit the fan, even resulting in yet another round of Congressional hearings.
We're fifty five years past these events, yet we still can't seem to move past the trauma. No one trusts the government any more, and we take it for granted that our elected officials do things against the law. Guns violence has become an everyday event, with a new tragedy and outrage happening against the most helpless while sides are chosen. Perhaps the high school kids, born after even the movie 'JFK ' came out, in their Children's Crusade against gun violence, can find a solution. In all these years, the older generations certainly have not.
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