The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

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This article is about the original 1962 film. For the 2004 remake, see The Manchurian Candidate (2004 film).
The Manchurian Candidate
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJohn Frankenheimer
Screenplay byGeorge Axelrod
Based onThe Manchurian Candidate
1959 novel
by Richard Condon
Produced by
  • George Axelrod
  • John Frankenheimer
Starring
Narrated by
Black and white
Production
company
M.C. Productions
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • October 24, 1962 (1962-10-24)
Running time
126 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2.2 million[2]
Box office$7.7 million[3] or $3.3 million (US/Canada)[4]
The film's trailer

The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American

political thriller film directed and produced by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay is 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.[5]

The plot centers on

People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union
, plans to assassinate the presidential nominee of an American political party, with the death leading to the overthrow of 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 Western critics and was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress (Angela 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".[6][7]

Plot

Soviet and Chinese soldiers capture a U.S. Army platoon during the

communist China. Three days later, Sergeant Raymond Shaw and Captain Bennett "Ben" 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 were killed. Shaw returns to the U.S., where his mother, Eleanor Iselin, exploits his heroism to further the political career of her husband, Senator John Iselin. When asked to describe Shaw, two soldiers in his unit uniformly respond that he is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being they have ever known. In fact, Shaw is a strict, cold, unsympathetic loner hated by his men.

After Marco is promoted to major and assigned to Army Intelligence, he has a recurring nightmare: a hypnotized Shaw blithely murders two soldiers from his platoon before an assembly of communist military leaders to demonstrate their revolutionary brainwashing technique. Marco learns that Allen Melvin, a fellow soldier, has the same nightmare. When Melvin and Marco separately identify identical photos of the two male communist leaders from their dreams, Army Intelligence agrees to investigate.

Shaw with Major Marco after jumping into a lake in Central Park when his programming was accidentally triggered

During captivity, Shaw was programmed as a

solitaire
; the queen of diamonds activates him. Meanwhile, Eleanor is masterminding John's political ascent with his baseless claims that communists work at the Defense Department. To spite his mother and stepfather, Shaw takes a job at a newspaper published by Holborn Gaines, Iselin's harshest critic. Communist agents later have Shaw murder Gaines to confirm that his brainwashing still works.

Chunjin, a Korean agent who posed as a guide for Shaw's platoon, arrives at Shaw's apartment asking for work. The unsuspecting Shaw hires him as a valet and cook. Marco recognizes Chunjin when he visits Shaw; he violently attacks him and demands to know what happened during the platoon's captivity. After Marco is arrested for assault, Eugenie "Rosie" Cheyney, an attractive young woman he met on the train, posts his bail.

Shaw rekindles a romance with Jocelyn Jordan, the daughter of liberal Senator Thomas Jordan, the Iselins' chief political foe. Eleanor wants to garner Senator Jordan's support for Iselin's vice-presidential bid. Unswayed, Jordan insists he will oppose the nomination. After Jocelyn inadvertently triggers Shaw's programming by wearing a Queen of Diamonds costume at the Iselins' party, they elope. Furious at Senator Jordan's rebuff, Eleanor—who is Shaw's American "operator" (handler)—sends him to kill Senator Jordan at his home. Shaw also kills Jocelyn when she inadvertently happens upon the murder scene. Having no memory of the killing, Shaw is grief-stricken upon learning they are dead.

After discovering the queen of diamonds card's role in Shaw's conditioning, Marco uses a forced deck to deprogram him, hoping to learn Shaw's next assignment. Eleanor primes Shaw to assassinate their party's presidential nominee during the convention so that 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 had requested a programmed assassin, never knowing it would be her own son. When taking power, she vows revenge upon her superiors for choosing him.

Disguised as a priest, Shaw enters Madison Square Garden, taking a sniper's position in a vacant overhead spotlight booth. Marco and his supervisor, Colonel Milt, race to the convention to stop Shaw. At the last moment, Shaw aims away from the presidential nominee and instead kills Senator Iselin and Eleanor. When Marco bursts into the booth, Shaw, wearing the Medal of Honor, says he was the only one who could stop his mother and stepfather, then kills himself. Later that evening with Rosie, Marco 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,[8] 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.[8]

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

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.[9] 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.[8][9]

In the novel, Eleanor Iselin's father had sexually abused her 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.[8]

Nearly half the film's $2.2 million production budget went to Sinatra's salary for his performance.[10]

Cold War

Known as one of the most "iconic" films of the

President John F. Kennedy, it "warns against both right-wing hysteria and bureaucratic complacency".[12] The film itself was supposed to re-start cold war politics and “reanimate” anti-communist ideas, especially since there had been no cold war films since Jet Pilot in 1957.[12]

The Manchurian Candidate encapsulates

USSR and China.[13] It conveys the popular myth that China was brainwashing US soldiers for communist purposes of creating their "Manchurian Candidate", or perfect robotic-like soldier, during the Korean War.[14] Like the Richard Condon novel that it was based on, the film represents everything that US citizens were fearful of during the cold war.[15]

Depiction of communists

In the Garden Scene, pictures of

Soviet star in between them and the head of the Manchurian candidates standing beneath the star. This insinuates a collaboration between China and Russia with the goal to manipulate the US for communist world domination.[16] During their demonstration, the communist leaders refer to Raymond as "the mechanism" and "the weapon", which affirms the idea that communist's only see people as gadgets that can be thrown away after their use.[16] The film depicts communists as eager to give up their lives, which are expendable in their eyes anyway, for the cause of universal communism, which is a "less than essential end".[16]
 

In The Manchurian Candidate, communists are not peers, but instead relate to each other within the hierarchy of communist leaders. For example, there are rows of communist leaders who all look down upon the Manchurian Candidates in the Garden Scene.[16] In addition, Raymond Shaw’s mother only uses those around her, like her son and husband, as pawns in her communist ploy to gain a powerful position through her husband’s candidacy for Vice President of the US.[12] This is juxtaposed with the loving, trusting, and open relationships like those between Shaw and Jocelyn Jordan, and Marco and Janet Leigh.[16]

Conspiracy theories and US mind control

The Manchurian Candidate uses "science, the conditioned subject, and the moving image" to create a realistic framework for the existence of mind control.

Project MKUltra, in which the CIA looked to control human behavior through trauma programming and psychoactive drugs starting in the early 1950s and ending in 1973.[20] According to the CIA, "historians have asserted that creating a 'Manchurian Candidate' subject through 'mind control' techniques was a goal of MK-ULTRA and related CIA projects."[21]

Reception

Critical response

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".[22]

On the

weighted average, the film has a score of 94 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[24]

Academic response

Scholars have used The Manchurian Candidate as a window into Cold War paranoia. Professor Catherine Canino claimed that the film fulfilled the prophecies of "the imagined loss of cherished American autonomy and free will".[25] Political scientist Michael Rogin concluded that The Manchurian Candidate "aims to reawaken a lethargic nation to a communist menace".[12] Humanities Center director [Timothy Melley] argued that "The Manchurian Candidate's deepest worry is neither communism nor anticommunism but embattled human autonomy."[18]

Awards and honours

Award Category Nominee(s) Result
Academy Awards[26] Best Supporting Actress Angela Lansbury Nominated
Best Film Editing Ferris Webster Nominated
British Academy Film Awards[27] Best Film from any Source Nominated
Directors Guild of America Awards[28] Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures John Frankenheimer Nominated
Golden Globe Awards[29] Best Director – Motion Picture John Frankenheimer Nominated
Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Angela Lansbury Won
Laurel Awards Top Action Drama Nominated
Top Action Performance Frank Sinatra Nominated
Top Female Supporting Performance Angela Lansbury Nominated
National Board of Review Awards[30] Best Supporting Actress Angela Lansbury (Also for All Fall Down) Won
National Film Preservation Board National Film Registry Inducted
Producers Guild of America Awards PGA Hall of Fame – Motion Pictures Won

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".[31] The film ranked 67th 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 17th on AFI's "AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills" lists. In April 2007, Lansbury's character was selected by Time as one of the 25 greatest villains in cinema history.[32]

Releases

According to a false rumor, Sinatra removed the film from distribution after

Brooklyn cinema in January 1964, and that same month in White Plains, New York,[34] and Jersey City, New Jersey.[35] It was televised nationwide on CBS Thursday Night Movie
on September 16, 1965.

Sinatra's representatives acquired rights to the film in 1972 after the initial contract with United Artists expired.[33] The film was rebroadcast on nationwide television in April 1974 on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies.[36] After a 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.[33][37]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-326-13987-2. Archived
    from the original on April 3, 2017. Retrieved April 2, 2017.
  2. ^ "The Manchurian Candidate Still Shocks After All These Years". Archived from the original on 2018-03-19. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
  3. ^ Box Office Information for The Manchurian Candidate. Archived January 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine The Numbers. Retrieved August 21, 2014.
  4. ^ "Big Rental Pictures of 1962". Variety. 9 Jan 1963. p. 13. Please note these are rentals and not gross figures
  5. ^ Macek, Carl; McGarry, Eileen (1996). Silver, Alain; Ward, Elizabeth (eds.). Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style. New York City, Woodstock, NY & London: Overlook Press. pp. 183–84.
  6. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived
    from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  7. ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved November 15, 2022.
  8. ^ a b c d Director John Frankenheimer's audio commentary, available on The Manchurian Candidate DVD
  9. ^ a b Lovell, Glen (May 28, 1998). "'Manchurian' revolt: Frankenheimer offers Sinatra revelations on DVD". Variety.com. Archived from the original on April 17, 2021. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
  10. ^ Mann, Roderick (February 12, 1988). "The Return of 'The Manchurian Candidate': Classic Re-Released After Long Disputes". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on April 10, 2021. Retrieved April 11, 2021.
  11. ^
    JSTOR 45180792
    . Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  12. ^
    JSTOR 2928536
    .
  13. JSTOR 2568762
    .
  14. ^ Hampton, Howard (March 15, 2016). "The Manchurian Candidate: Dread Center". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  15. ^ a b Grant, Brittanny (2015). "Was It All Just A Hallucination? The CIA's Secret LSD Experiments". ScholarWorks@Arcadia.
  16. ^
    JSTOR 41053668
    .
  17. S2CID 57562839
    .
  18. ^
    JSTOR 27669224
    .
  19. JSTOR 23357877
    .
  20. S2CID 57570519
    .
  21. ^ CIA (December 2018). "Project MK-ULTRA" (PDF). Cia.gov. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  22. ^ Ebert, Roger (December 7, 2003). "Great Movie: The Manchurian Candidate". rogerebert.com. Archived from the original on April 27, 2017. Retrieved April 3, 2017.
  23. ^ "The Manchurian Candidate (1962)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Archived from the original on December 12, 2016. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  24. CBS Interactive). Archived
    from the original on April 17, 2018. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
  25. ISSN 1229-4381
    .
  26. ^ "The 35th Academy Awards (1963) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-08-23.
  27. BAFTA
    . 1963. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  28. ^ "15th DGA Awards". Directors Guild of America Awards. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  29. HFPA
    . Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  30. ^ "1962 Award Winners". National Board of Review. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  31. ^ The Manchurian Candidate, One of 25 Films Added to National Registry. Archived March 26, 2018, at the Wayback Machine The New York Times. Retrieved August 28, 2012.
  32. ^ Corliss, Richard (April 25, 2007). "Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Iselin". entertainment.time.com. Time. Archived from the original on June 22, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
  33. ^ a b c d Schlesinger, Michael (2008-01-27). "A 'Manchurian' myth". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on January 9, 2010. Retrieved January 28, 2008.
  34. ^ "Movie Timetable." Tarrytown (NY) Daily News, 16 January 1964.
  35. ^ "Movie Time Table [sic]." Summit (NJ) Herald, 16 January 1964.
  36. ^ "Prime-time network TV listings for Saturday April 27, 1974". Ultimate70s.com. Archived from the original on March 27, 2018. Retrieved April 2, 2017.
  37. ISBN 9781429964746. Archived
    from the original on July 6, 2014. Retrieved March 16, 2016.

External links

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