Associated with the New Hollywood movement,[1] his best-known works include his critically-acclaimed "paranoia trilogy": the neo-noir mystery Klute (1971), the conspiracy thriller The Parallax View (1974), and the Watergate scandal drama All the President's Men (1976).

Pakula received Academy Award nominations for Best Director for All the President's Men and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sophie's Choice.

His New York Times obituary stated Pakula made "different kinds of movies, all of them intended to entertain, but the thread connecting many of them was a style that emphasized and explored the psychology and motivations of his characters.

Pakula had a successful professional relationship as the producer of movies directed by Mockingbird director Robert Mulligan from 1957 to 1968.

This was followed in 1974 by The Parallax View starring Warren Beatty, a labyrinthine post-Watergate thriller involving political assassinations.

The film has been noted for its experimental use of hypnotic imagery in a celebrated film-within-a-film sequence in which the protagonist is inducted into the Parallax Corporation, whose main, although secret, enterprise is domestic terrorism.

Finally, in 1976, Pakula rounded out the "trilogy" with All the President's Men, based on the bestselling account of the Watergate scandal written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, respectively.