The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

The Manchurian Candidate
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John Frankenheimer
Screenplay by	George Axelrod
Based on	The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
Produced by	George Axelrod John Frankenheimer
Starring	Frank Sinatra Laurence Harvey Janet Leigh Angela Lansbury Henry Silva James Gregory
Narrated by	Paul Frees[1]
Cinematography	Lionel Lindon
Edited by	Ferris Webster
Music by	David Amram
Production company	M.C. Productions
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	October 24, 1962 (1962-10-24)
Running time	126 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2.2 million[2]
Box office	$7.7 million[3]

The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American neo-noir, psychological political thriller about the Cold War and sleeper agents. The film was directed and produced by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay was written by George Axelrod based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate. The film's leading actors are Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury, with co-stars Janet Leigh, Henry Silva, and James Gregory.^[4]

The plot centers on Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw, part of a prominent political family. Shaw is brainwashed by communists after his Army platoon is captured. He returns to civilian life in the United States, where he becomes an unwitting assassin in an international communist conspiracy to subvert and overthrow the U.S. government.

The film was released in the United States on October 24, 1962, at the height of U.S.–Soviet hostility during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was widely acclaimed by critics and was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress (Lansbury) and Best Editing. It was selected in 1994 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[5][6]

Plot[]

Soviet and Chinese soldiers capture a U.S. Army platoon during the Korean War, and take the men to Manchuria in communist China. Three days later, Sergeant Raymond Shaw and Captain Bennett Marco return to UN lines. Upon Marco's recommendation, Shaw is awarded the Medal of Honor for saving his soldiers' lives in combat, though two men are killed in action. Shaw returns to the United States, where his heroism is exploited by his diabolical, politically motivated mother, Eleanor Iselin, whose subversive plans are to further the career of her husband, Senator John Iselin. When asked to describe Shaw, the other soldiers in his unit robotically respond, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." On the contrary, Raymond Shaw is a cold, sad, unsympathetic loner.

After Marco is promoted to major and assigned to Army Intelligence, he has a recurring nightmare: a hypnotized Shaw blithely murders the two soldiers from his own platoon before an assembly of communist military leaders to demonstrate their revolutionary brainwashing technique. Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon, Alan Melvin, has the same nightmare. When Melvin and he separately identify photos of the same two men—leading figures in communist governments—from their dreams, Army Intelligence agrees to help Marco investigate.

Shaw (Harvey, left) with Major Marco (Sinatra) after having jumped into a lake in New York City's Central Park when his programming was accidentally triggered

During captivity, Shaw was programmed as a sleeper agent, who blindly obeys orders to kill without any memory of his crimes. His battle heroism was a false memory implanted during the platoon's brainwashing. Agents trigger Shaw by suggesting he play solitaire; the queen of diamonds activates him. Eleanor masterminds the ascent of John, a McCarthy-like demagogue who makes baseless claims that communists work within the Department of Defense. Shaw repudiates his mother and stepfather by taking a job at a newspaper published by their rival, Holborn Gaines. Communist agents have Shaw murder Gaines to confirm that his brainwashing still works.

Chunjin, a Korean agent who posed as a guide for Shaw's platoon, infiltrates his apartment as a valet and butler. Marco recognizes Chunjin when he visits Shaw's apartment; he violently attacks him and demands to know what really happened during the platoon's captivity. After Marco is arrested for assault, Eugenie Cheyney, a woman he met on a train, posts his bail and breaks her engagement to date him.

Shaw rekindles a romance with Jocelyn Jordan, the daughter of liberal Senator Thomas Jordan, the Iselins' chief political foe. Eleanor arranges their reunion to garner Senator Jordan's support for John's vice presidential bid. Unswayed, Jordan insists he will block Iselin's attempts to seek the party's nomination. After Jocelyn inadvertently triggers Shaw's programming by wearing a queen of diamonds costume at a party for her thrown by the Iselins, they elope. Furious at Senator Jordan's rebuff, Eleanor—who perversely is Shaw's American handler— sends him to kill Jordan at his home. Shaw also kills Jocelyn when she stumbles upon the murder scene. Afterwards, Shaw has no memory of killing the Jordans and is grief-stricken when he learns they are dead.

After discovering the card's role in Shaw's conditioning, Marco uses a forced deck to deprogram him, hoping he will reveal his next assignment. Eleanor primes Shaw to assassinate their party's presidential nominee at the height of its convention so that Senator Iselin, as the vice-presidential candidate, will become the nominee by default. In the uproar, he will seek emergency powers to establish a strict authoritarian regime. Eleanor tells Shaw that she requested a programmed assassin, never knowing he would be her own son. She vows that, when she takes power, she will exact revenge on the communists for selecting him.

Shaw enters Madison Square Garden disguised as a priest, and takes up a sniper's position in an empty spotlight booth high above. Marco and his supervisor, Colonel Milt, race to the convention to stop him. At the last moment, Shaw aims away from his intended target, the presidential nominee, and instead kills Eleanor and Senator Iselin. When Marco arrives inside the lighting booth, Shaw tells him that not even the Army could have stopped them, so he had to. Then Shaw, wearing the Medal of Honor around his neck, immediately commits suicide. Later that evening, Marco, speaking to Eugenie, privately mourns Shaw's death.

Cast[]

Production[]

Sinatra suggested Lucille Ball for the role of Eleanor Iselin, but Frankenheimer, who had worked with Lansbury in All Fall Down,^[7] insisted that Sinatra watch her performance in that film before a final choice was made. Although Lansbury played Raymond Shaw's mother, she was, in fact, only three years older than Laurence Harvey, who played Shaw. An early scene in which Shaw, recently decorated with the Medal of Honor, argues with his parents was filmed in Sinatra's own private plane.^[7]

Janet Leigh plays Marco's love interest. In a short biography of Leigh broadcast on Turner Classic Movies, actress Jamie Lee Curtis reveals her mother had been served divorce papers on behalf of her father, actor Tony Curtis, the morning that the scene where Sinatra and she first meet on a train was filmed.

In the scene where Marco attempts to deprogram Shaw in a hotel room opposite the convention, Sinatra is at times slightly out of focus. It was a first take, and Sinatra failed to be as effective in subsequent retakes, a common factor in his film performances.^[8] In the end, Frankenheimer elected to use the out-of-focus take. Critics subsequently praised him for showing Marco from Shaw's distorted point of view.^[7][8]

In the novel, Eleanor Iselin had been sexually abused by her father as a child. Before the dramatic climax, she uses her son's brainwashing to have sex with him. Concerned with the reaction to even a reference to a taboo topic like incest in a mainstream film at that time, the filmmakers instead had Eleanor kiss Shaw on the lips to imply her incestuous attraction to him.^[7]

Nearly half of the film's production budget of $2.2 million went to Sinatra's salary for his performance.^[9] Another $200,000 went to Harvey.

Reception[]

Critical response[]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Manchurian Candidate holds an approval rating of 97% rating based on 60 reviews, with an average rating of 8.70/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "A classic blend of satire and political thriller that was uncomfortably prescient in its own time, The Manchurian Candidate remains distressingly relevant today."^[10] On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film has a score of 94 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[11]

Film critic Roger Ebert listed The Manchurian Candidate on his "Great Movies" list, declaring that it is "inventive and frisky, takes enormous chances with the audience, and plays not like a 'classic', but as a work as alive and smart as when it was first released".^[12]

Awards and honors[]

In 1994, The Manchurian Candidate was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[13] The film ranked at number 67 on the "AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies" when that list was first compiled in 1998, but a 2007 revised version excluded it. It was also number 17 on AFI's "AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills" lists. In April 2007, Angela Lansbury's character was selected by Time as one of the 25 greatest villains in cinema history.^[14]

Releases[]

According to a false rumor, Sinatra removed the film from distribution after the John F. Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963. Michael Schlesinger, who was responsible for the film's 1988 reissue by MGM/UA, has helped debunk the rumor. According to him, the film was not removed, but public interest in it was small immediately before the assassination.^[15] The autumn 1962 release had run its course. Box-office successes in the United States immediately before the shootings in Dallas were comedies, notably It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and movie distributors avoided reviving a thriller with a creepy ending that millions of people had seen barely a year earlier.^[15] Newspaper display ads indicate that after the assassination, The Manchurian Candidate was not rereleased as frequently or as widely as other movies from 1962, but it was indeed revived and never was banned. The movie played at a Brooklyn cinema two months after the assassination (January 1964), and that same month, in White Plains^[16] and Jersey City, New Jersey.^[17] The film was subsequently televised nationwide on CBS Thursday Night at the Movies on September 16, 1965.

Sinatra's representatives acquired rights to the film in 1972 after the initial contract with United Artists expired.^[15] The film was rebroadcast on nationwide television in April 1974 on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies.^[18] After a successful showing at the New York Film Festival in 1987 increased public interest in the film, the studio reacquired the rights and it became again available for theater and video releases.^[15][19]

See also[]

• List of American films of 1962
• List of assassinations in fiction
• Conspiracy thriller
• Hypnosis in popular culture
• Spy film

References[]

External links[]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

• The Manchurian Candidate at IMDb
• The Manchurian Candidate at the TCM Movie Database
• The Manchurian Candidate at AllMovie
• The Manchurian Candidate at the American Film Institute Catalog
• The Manchurian Candidate at Box Office Mojo
• The Manchurian Candidate at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Manchurian Candidate at Metacritic
• The Manchurian Candidate at AMC Filmsite. Background, detailed storyline, and key dialogue excerpts.
• The Manchurian Candidate at McCarthyism and the Movies
• The Manchurian Candidate: Dread Center an essay by Howard Hampton at the Criterion Collection
• Ann Hornaday, "The 34 best political movies ever made" The Washington Post Jan. 23, 2020), rank #3
• The Manchurian Candidate essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, Bloomsbury Academic, 2010 ISBN 0826429777, pages 582-584 [1]