Paranoia has the ability to play with an audience. A quote from the movie Blue Collar (1978) defines paranoia, “All you got’s a buncha shit.” There are moments of suspense in films that set the tone for a thrill ride. This is because paranoia allows viewers to reflect on similar situations (from movies) in their own lives. There are different types of paranoia in the following three movies I have chosen. They are financial paranoia from Blue Collar, media paranoia from The Parallax View (1974), and society paranoia from The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). All of these films have a variety of elements that immerse viewers into a cinematic experience that is haunting due to paranoia, yet enticing.

The financial paranoia in Blue Collar is thought provoking.   It features three men in a union who are concerned about their income to support their families. Also, they believe they are not receiving the benefits of working in the union. The viewers see the paranoia in the main characters. They are Smokey (played by Yaphet Kotto), Zeke (played by Richard Pryor), and Jerry (played by Harvey Keitel). These three men come together to work out a plan of stealing money from the union. The issue is that their judgment can impact them in the long run. As the camera does numerous close-ups of these characters’ facial expressions and frustrations (these happen in the moments of intense conversation), viewers will realize that the paranoia is not going to calm down. Based on the decisions these characters want to make, the film shifts to become even darker in terms of paranoia.

Paranoia is like a landscape in these movies that provides a background that often worsens during the film. These films do well with this concept because all of them contain a conspiracy or a major event that causes many unanswered questions and aggravation. Blue Collar had many of those elements, and the next two films that will be elaborated upon will have them as well. As the main character in The Parallax View goes deep into a story regarding a senator’s assassination, paranoia of Joseph Frady (played by Warren Beatty who is the main character) becomes extremely complex.

For Frady, his life is on the line as the media and people believe what he is writing is a lie. This causes a huge conspiracy that ends up in negative headlines and puts tons of stress on Frady. His paranoia leads to reacting violently at moments. As he falls into an uncomfortable and unexpected fight with a sheriff, viewers sense Frady’s distressed paranoia as he asks the sheriff, “You wouldn’t be offended if I call the police, would you?” He asks that question because he is in a state where he feels no one can be trusted. Given Frady is putting himself in trouble with the media, he cannot be trusted either. Therefore, the authorities and Frady are even on bad terms. As the movie has silent moments, and drifts along with Frady’s agony of the media’s representation, the film illustrates real-life paranoia in real-life situations. The Director does this quite well to an extent where the serious matters are just purely engaging for the audience.

After exploring the first two types of paranoia, I feel there is a sense of art to paranoia in movies. As I watched both Blue Collar and The Parallax View, I realized the issues that the characters have upon them are real-life problems that people challenge everyday. The positive aspect of that (in terms of entertainment) is that it creates tension that may make viewers feel nervous as they watch the movies. When that happens, the situations become worse, and viewers feel they are taken into the world of paranoia as part of these cinematic sensations. As the lighting darkens frequently in these films, that is the sign that there is climax arising. The climax comes slowly but surely.

Finally, there is The Friends of Eddie Coyle: a suspenseful mafia movie with very little, but intense violence. The main character is Eddie Coyle (played by Robert Mitchum), a man who is under lots of stress. He has a feeling he is going to have to do some time behind bars because of his involvement with the mafia. To hopefully prevent his sentence, he decides to rat out the other criminals he worked with. This judgment for Coyle leaves him with society paranoia, because he is extremely stressed and has times where he drinks to relieve his stress. As the camera glances on him at a bar drinking, his face is faded with distress. This creates a dramatic tone for viewers and the film since there is lots of drama involved and Coyle’s life is on the line.

Paranoia in cinema is an art. Blue Collar, The Parallax View, and The Friends of Eddie Coyle all focus on scenarios that are serious and realistic. The different types of paranoia are shown in different ways, but they all compare in how they affect the main characters of these three films. As their paranoia gets out of hand, viewers will be embraced into the journey through cinema of the negative impact of paranoia.

The Parallax View is confusing, yet enticing. The plot is easy to understand, but the film’s subject matter is hard to keep up with. Viewers are introduced to Joseph Brady (played by Warren Beatty). Brady is an ambitious journalist that decides to investigate a senator’s assassination. This decision however, leads to complicated scenarios of conspiracies which involve multinational corporations behind every event in the world headlines. What is interesting though, is that the film somewhat relates to Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Captain America: Winter Soldier is a Marvel movie that involves battles of Liberty with historic events, but done from a fictional approach. The Parallax View focuses on terms of battling for Liberty as well, but in real-life situations. How both these movies compare is the start of the conflict. Both start off with an assassination of a major superior. Captain America: Winter Soldier is set off with fictional action, and The Parallax View is set off with real-life situations.

The paranoid feel of Captain America: Winter Soldier is like a war movie, but the sense of paranoia with the concepts of superheroes added. The main character Captain America (Chris Evans) has some horrid memories of being in the war. The sense of filming plays into this as his flashbacks are faded in white and gray. With the paranoia side of The Parallax View, it is more of the main character giving into his emotions and making disaster choices as a result of his actions. Evans has many war traumas, and Beatty has many people and lots of press trying to grab his attention, but not for anything positive. The filmmakers choose to use the same paranoid approach in 2014 to grab viewer’s attention so there can be excitement.

The similarities with the plots of both movies are conspiracies that turn into disasters. When this happens, situations do not calm down. There is rising action. The conspiracy in Captain America: Winter Soldier is that the main character is trying to adjust to the present time period. He is primarily from the generation of World War I. Now with conflicts from the past coming into the present, the conspiracy is that the main character struggles to figure out what to fix. That becomes a disaster because the enemy from his time period somehow made his way into the present as well, and now he has a puzzle to put together to try and salvage the conflict. In The Parallax View, an assassination takes place and the journalist becomes hooked on the issue. This makes him read much into the situation, which potentially puts his life on the line. This becomes a disaster because people believe that what he is writing is not the truth. This makes many people despise him, and want to potentially harm him. The rising action is similarly constructed in both films.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a crime film with structure. There is an issue that happens and different people have different roles in the crime scenario. Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) decides to tell on his friends to avoid jail time. When he does this, though, his mob friends have family with lives on the line. The criminals, however, are depicted to seem as if they are normal people who have lives, but on the outside world, they have demons out to haunt them based on their judgment in the crime world. This film is detailed in how every character plays a role in this small town of criminals.

Director Peter Yates opens the film with a quiet tone of a character walking to his car. The silence in the film infers shady behavior. That is the tone where I find the suspicion and suspense to take place. That mellow tone leaves audience to be ready for a film with situations that can be disturbing, yet enticing. Later on, the movie brings us to a bar where the mob hang out. The cinematography of the bar is shaded black with some red. That cinematic concept sets the tone for suspense.

The film’s attitude on characters appears to be unreliable. The unreliability of characters later sums up to how everyone in the crime is involved. The film views the main character Eddie Coyle as someone who may be facing jail time for numerous offenses. He is a small time gangster in Boston. Coyle is stressed in curiosity on terms if he is going to be doing jail time or not. We realize his stress as he says, “I done the time and I stood up but I can’t take no more chances.” The relevance of this quote is that Coyle does not want to suffer because he knows he will not be in a pleasant place based on his actions. Especially since he has been there before.

Yates chooses to present the film in a quiet tone to be a different mob movie. Whereas other mob films like Shaft, Scarface, and The Godfather contain tons of shooting and violence. The Friends of Eddie Coyle has some of that, but has more of the conversations and people being held hostage play the suspense in the movie. Instead of frequent shooting of guns and violence, there are talks of guns in the movie. Guns are distributed illegally. When the deals are taking place, the conversations among the topic is relevant, sadistic, and calculated. The negativity of this aspect is shown in the quote where Jackie Brown (Steven Keats) says, “I’ve got more than five machine guns, and the rest are gonna be pointed at YOU.” This moment defines disturbing situations on terms of conversation instead of action.

The film may make viewers think that Coyle is the focus of the film. He is a big deal, but he is not the main focus. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a title that does not refer much to Coyle, but refers to the people he is snitching on. Also the word “friends” infers that these people can be normal people who live an everyday life. Based on their judgment, though, their enemies are going to come back to make their lives harder.

The filmmakers chose to present The Friends of Eddie Coyle in these manners is because they did not want to make a typical mafia movie. What I mean by this is a film where the focus would only be violence, coarse language, and suggestive content. An example is the movie Shaft. The goal of Shaft was to be harsh and vulgar, which was common for 1970s mafia movies. This caused The Friends of Eddie Coyle to stand out then, because this was a completely different type of mafia movie.

Three and a half stars.