The Legacy of Paranoid Thrillers

Paranoid thrillers are constant in cinema's history, but at any given moment they reflect our specific anxieties back to us and reveal how we feel about our institutions.
Here, I explore how paranoid thrillers crystalized as a genre in American cinema and examine the possibility of a contemporary renaissance in conspiracy fiction.
Patreon: / luxessays
Twitter: / travratc
Referenced Films: All the President’s Men, Captain America; Winter Soldier, Chiantown, Cinema Paradiso, Citizenfour, Cutter’s Way, Double Indemnity, Get Out, Inherent Vice, Minority Report, Mr. Robot S1 E01, S1 E06, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Night Moves, Rosemary’s Baby, Seconds, Taxi Driver, The Conversation, The Manchurian Candidate, The Nice Guys, The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, Total Recall, V for Vendetta, X Files S4 E10

[@LootFreak]

Bro, this is criminally under-viewed and liked. Great stuff.

[@martichavez3938]

Please, come back! Your essays are really great with the info and the progression of the clips! Every Frame a Painting is in the limbo and you talked about themes that almost no other videoessayist didn't made with so much complete arguments

[@travisleeratcliff]

I just released a new essay last week on the career of silent film pioneer Lois Weber! As I'm quarantined and unable to do a lot of my other doc shooting and editing right now I'll be working on a bunch of additional essays for the foreseeable future. Thanks for your kind words! And share the work if you can so more people will see it!

[@hadymahmoud1141]

I'm a Beginner Egyptian filmmaker who is thanking you for your valuable essay videos , they're really useful and well essayed, please continue, i'm following your channels here and on Vimeo

[@travisleeratcliff]

Thanks Hady! I plan to keep making them, so stay tuned.

[@snoosh00]

Lux just get ready until you hit the front-page of Reddit one day, you'll get 60000 subs overnight. Great video man. I really enjoyed it.

[@stevencoardvenice]

I love this 70s genre

[@gloomyvale3671]

The films of the 1970s were the pinnacle of that genre, they were dark and very sinister without huge body counts or shock value, take all the presidents Men, no huge payoff at the end of the film just subtle conclusion, yet the film was genuinely sinister and dark, later films are too visceral to be taken seriously.

[@canonalberic6108]

great video essay man! keep er coming👊

[@travisleeratcliff]

Thanks!

[@justinmiller9564]

Great video.

[@bonbibonkerz]

man, your channel deserves more subs!

[@travisleeratcliff]

Thank you so much for the kind words! I just love making the content, so if it finds an audience, that's great, if it doesn't, that's okay too.

[@pbroeske6818]

Nice work; intriguing observations. But this video cries out for chyrons -- to i.d. the various films (and the dates of their release).

[@LordBaNZa]

This is a good new channel, but I would be careful playing a song by a band as big a Pink Floyd in it's entirety like that. You're just asking for video takedowns once you get big enough for them to notice.

[@travisleeratcliff]

Thanks for the advice! I'm still navigating the whole fair-use arena, so I'll definitely think about making an alteration to this video as a back-up for that eventuality.