Article
The Conspiracy Thrillers of the 1970s: Paranoid Time

By: Jay Millikan
2004-07-07



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Posted 07/06/2004 - 03:07:04 PM by IanMathers:
 Excellent article (I'm really looking forward to the next installment!), but Holy Mother of God, is that Parallax View image creepy.
 
Posted 07/06/2004 - 05:16:05 PM by daftwankie:
 Agreed. Concise and informed. Great piece, Jay.
 
Posted 07/07/2004 - 05:01:48 PM by hutlock:
 Yes, faboo as always, Jay. My little "Blow Out" story -- I saw it while I was in school at a student screening at Oberlin (a fairly artistic community, trust me) and the whole film was marked by fits of hysterical laughter from the crowd. I was disappointed in my peers at the time (I really think it is a good film, despite the melodrama -- "those philistines!"), but this certainly does lend some creedence to your "tongue in cheek" theory... in retrospect, I do see where some of it is just plain absurd and over-the-top.
 
Posted 10/25/2005 - 04:41:35 AM by thither:
 Sorry for necroposting here, but I just thought somebody should mention that Blow Out is a remake of Antonioni's 1968 film Blow-Up, which is itself thematically more similar to The Conversation than the other films mentioned. It has a lot to do with the indeterminacy of meaning, and with questioning the amorality of a voyeur / viewer figure analagous to Gene Hackman's role in The Conversation. It's definitely a European precursor to all of these films (not necessarily from direct inspiration so much as hooking into the same grim zeitgeist that they all share), and recommended for fans of this era. Ok, I'm done nitpicking now. Great article, thanks.