#803: FRANKENHEIMER, John: The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

FRANKENHEIMER, John (United States)

The Manchurian Candidate [1962]

Spine #803
Blu-ray

The name John Frankenheimer became forever synonymous with heart-in-the-throat filmmaking when this quintessential sixties political thriller was released. Set in the early fifties, this razor-sharp adaptation of the novel by Richard Condon concerns the decorated U.S. Army sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), who as a prisoner during the Korean War is brainwashed into becoming a sleeper assassin in a Communist conspiracy, and a fellow POW (Frank Sinatra) who slowly uncovers the sinister plot. In an unforgettable performance, Angela Lansbury plays Raymond's villainous mother, the controlling wife of a witch-hunting anti-Communist senator with his eyes on the White House. The rare film that takes aim at the frenzy of the McCarthy era while also being suffused with its Cold War paranoia, The Manchurian Candidate remains potent, shocking American moviemaking.

126 minutes
Black & White

Monaural

1:75:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2016

Director/Writers

Based on the novel by Richard Condon.

Screenplay by George Axelrod.

John Frankenheimer was 32 when he directed The Manchurian Candidate.

Other Frankenheimer films in the Collection:

#667: Seconds (1966)

The Film

The McCarthy era

was a dangerous time to be different. If you were a homosexual, you were also a Communist. If you were a Jew, it’s most likely you were also a Communist. If you were a Communist, you were definitely a Communist.

Brainwashing. 

The way it’s presented in this film may seem outrageous so many decades later … but see The Trump Phenomenom.

**

This film — made at a time when McCarthyism was finally on the wane — posits one possible, chilling conclusion to all that madness.

**

David Amram did relatively few scores for feature films, but this one is a doozy. Paranoia intensified.

Sinatra (Major Marco) gets top billing, of course. He’s been given worse material and better. He’s just fine as the first to shake off the brainwashing. And Laurence Harvey (Shaw) looks like he’s on Sodium Pentothal for most of the film, although this is how his character behaves. 

What is Janet Leigh (Eugenie) doing here?

• Sinatra is on a train and can’t light his cigarette, because his hands are shaking. He stumbles out into the vestibule, upturning his drink table.
• Leigh follows him and lights a cigarette for him.
• “Maryland’s a beautiful state.”
• Sinatra: “This is Delaware.”
• “I know. I was one of the original Chinese workmen who laid the track on this stretch.”

Huh?

Senator Iselin (James Gregory) as the McCarthy stand-in is just a little too stupid, but his controlling wife (Angela Lansbury) is the best thing in the picture. She delivers her lines with a venom that eats its way through the screen … and is that “chilling” presence until the very end. That full-mouth kiss she plants on her son’s lips was Production Code-speak for something a little more bizarre …

Leslie Parrish (Jocelyn Jordan) is eye-candy; as she was in the famed Star Trek episode Who Mourns for Adonis? (1967) — where she was practically naked by the standards of the day …

**

The opening 30 minutes are absolutely spell-binding cinema. It gets a little sleepy for the remainder, at times. The coolest idea of the Russian/Chinese bad guys as flower women is left hanging — Frankenheimer might have done well to have brought it back and incorporated it further into the nightmares.

Still, a good thriller.

Film Rating (0-60):

55

The Extras

The Booklet

Eight-page panel foldout featuring an essay by Howard Hampton.

Hampton is brilliant:

“As if arriving precisely on schedule, on October 24, 1962, smack in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the country is hanging at the DEFCON 2 brink of nuclear war with the Soviets, a desperately alarming, giddy-with-dread film premieres. A satirical thriller conjured out of the suppressed fears of that second life, The Manchurian Candidate is a flop-sweat fantasia on political conspiracies, right-wing nut jobs under the secret control of Communist handlers, and state-sponsored brainwashing and assassination as practical tools of realpolitik.”

“The deluge had arrived, and everybody in the movie, on camera and behind it, seemed to come equipped with surfboards. Throwing a seditious beach party atop a tidal wave, The Manchurian Candidate discovered chaos was the backbone of the American experience and posited un chien andalou as our animal spirit.”

Commentary

From 1997 featuring director Frankenheimer.

Lots of talk about the 18mm lens.

Interview 1

With actor Lansbury.

Great interview. She knew how good she was, even if she’s not even mentioned in the trailer.

Piece

Featuring filmmaker Errol Morris discussing his appreciation for The Manchurian Candidate.

With details.

Conversation

Between Frankenheimer, screenwriter Axelrod, and actor Sinatra from 1987.

Lightweight reminiscence.

Interivew 2

With historian Susan Carruthers about the Cold War brainwashing scare.

Good info on the subject.

Extras Rating (0-40):

34

55 + 34 =

89

By Director
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