The Post-Watergate Political Thriller: Three Days of the Condor
In the cheesiest, but also the best ways, Three Days of the Condor is a 70s thriller, specifically the conspiracy or paranoid thriller. This sub-genre is anchored to a very specific time and place, namely New Hollywood Cinema in 1970s, which was heavily influenced by the Watergate Scandal, the Pentagon Papers and the extremely unpopular, unsuccessful war in Vietnam. The central theme of all the conspiracy thrillers is a loss of faith. The hero’s world is turned upside-down when their government, their lover, someone they trust, can no longer be trusted. Certainly, Joseph Turner experiences a complete loss of trust in his government; after all they are trying to kill him. Even in that last shot, his CIA contact asks Turner how he knows The New York Times will print the story – and all Turner can do is walk away, looking uncertain and insecure. By the end, he doesn’t trust the press or even himself – were his own decisions the right decisions?
The conspiracy thriller also had a specific cinematic style that heightened the paranoia aspect of the genre. By using deep focus long shots and a mostly stationary camera, a creepily voyeuristic point of view is established. The characters wander in and out of frame, but the sound stays crystal clear, creating the illusion of listening to the conversation with headphones through a bug, while watching through a camera from across the street. The viewer is forced to watch the film as if a spy, validating the protagonist’s paranoia and involving the viewer on a subjective level. Another characteristic of the conspiracy thriller is extreme violence, usually involving many murders and fights, which are the literal manifestations of the protagonist fighting against the corrupt for justice. The establishment of repeated instances of violence is also a great tool to create suspense and danger, adding the thriller section to the conspiracy thriller.
The characteristics of the paranoid thriller are outlined and put in context by Jonathan Kirshner’s chapter,“Privacy, Paranoia, Disillusion, and Betrayal,” from his book, Hollywood’s Last Golden Age. A thorough timeline of Watergate as well as an analysis of the media and the public’s response to the scandal is provided to inform the context of the genre; while a study of the common traits in Alan Pakula’s paranoia film trilogy, Coppola’s The Conversation, etc., form the technical basis of the sub-genre. Together, content and form work to examine the theme of trust and paranoia after the largest corruption scandal America had ever seen. Gordon Willis shot most of the more famous paranoid thrillers like All The President’s Men, The Parallax View, and Klute. His camera captures shadows, using dark lighting to literally keep his audience in the dark, accentuating the mystery and paranoia felt by the nation and the genre.
The article’s point is to explore the way film form in the seventies was a manifestation of the political climate and changing public perception of institutions, specifically the government. The breakdown of the trust in America due to the fall of the supposedly righteous authority of the government and the Presidency as well as the disillusionment with sixties counter-culture. Interestingly, especially in The Parallax View and All The President’s Men, the good and bad dichotomy still exists in the form of the moral battle between free public media versus corrupt, secret government. It might be construed that the press is a manifestation of hope and change – a way to shed light and give the public a voice that can be heard. However, in Three Days, adapted from the James Grady novel, Six Days of the Condor, “changes to several characters, different or underdeveloped in the novel, highlight…[an] emphasis on moral ambiguity and with complex shades of gray favored over simple black and white truths” (154). Even the media is suspect, allowing the possibility that all and/or any institution is susceptible to the rampant institutional corruption. The ambiguous ending, a still shot of Redford looking over his shoulder outside the New York Times building, is far from a hopeful gaze, but rather a hopeless look, ingrained with distrust and insecurity.
As mentioned in the Kirshner article, The Parallax View is part of the Pakula’s paranoia trilogy, which falls into the same subgenre as Three Days of the Condor. Both films tackle corruption within institutions like law enforcement and politics with a focus on individual agency as the catalyst for justice. Parallax, photographed by Gordon Willis, is characterized by very shadowy lighting, juxtaposition between claustrophobic spaces with wide, dangerous expanses, and deep focus camera with long shot duration. Three Days shares many of these traits yet lacks the highly expressive lighting and intensely focused camera work, but is wonderfully edited to build slow suspense and intrigue.
The largest difference between the two films is the aspect of love. In Three Days, Turner starts up an affair with Kathy, the woman he holds hostage. The sex scene is an overly sentimental montage of black and white photographs juxtaposed with two bodies in warm light. Their mutual connection to the loneliness depicted in the bleak photographs alludes to the attitude of the American public in the wake of political scandal, devastating war and the breakdown of the counter-cultural revolution; deep suspicion and mistrust, as well as fear and lack of sincere human connection are all part of this attitude. Kathy and Turner form a bond in these insecurities, letting their guards down to trust each other, however fleeting – there is hope in love, in human connection.
