The Parallax View: The Brainwashing Scene (1974)

The greatest conspiracy thriller ever made, Pakula’s masterpiece is a stark and cinematic piece of paranoia combining Cold War hysteria with Manchurian Candidate-style machinations. The underrated Warren Beatty sleuths his way through an increasingly tense series of set pieces as the invisible forces of the Parallax Corporation draw ever closer. This ’brainwashing’ scene is the movie at its most subversive - how they mine such dread and emotion out of only a handful of clips and some cynically-produced music is staggering. Whether it really does turn Beatty’s character into a card-carrying killer, or just a pawn in a high stakes game played out by a hidden layer of unaccountable conspirators, is up to you.