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Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

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The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American Cold War political thriller film starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury and featuring Henry Silva,James Gregory, Leslie Parrish and John McGiver. It was directed by John Frankenheimer from an adaptation by George Axelrod of Richard Condon's 1959 novel.
The central concept of the film is that the son of a prominent, right-wing political family has been brainwashed as an unwitting assassin for an international Communist conspiracy. The Manchurian Candidate was nationally released on Wednesday, October 24, 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Plot

Sgt. Shaw (Harvey, left) meets Capt. Marco (Sinatra, right), after having jumped into a lake in Central Park, New York
During the Korean War, the Soviets capture an American platoon and take them to Manchuriain Communist China. After the war, the soldiers return to the United States, and Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is credited with saving their lives in combat. Upon the recommendation of the platoon's commander, Captain Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), Shaw is awarded the Medal of Honor for his supposed actions. In addition, when asked to describe him, Marco and the other soldiers automatically respond, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." Deep down, however, they know that Shaw is a cold, sad, unsociable loner.
Marco — who has since been promoted to Major — suffers from a recurring nightmare in which a hypnotized Shaw kills two fellow soldiers before the assembled military brass of communist nations, during a practical demonstration of a brainwashing technique. Marco wants to investigate, but receives no support from Army Intelligence as he has no proof. However, Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon, Allen Melvin (James Edwards), has had the same nightmare. When Melvin and Marco separately identify some of the men in the dream as leading figures in communist governments, Army Intelligence agrees to help Marco investigate.
Meanwhile, Shaw's mother, Mrs. Eleanor Iselin (Angela Lansbury), drives the political career of her husband, Senator John Yerkes Iselin (James Gregory), a bombastic McCarthy-like demagogue who is dismissed by most people as a fool. Senator Iselin's political stature is established when he claims that an undetermined number of communists work within the Defense Department. However, unbeknownst to Raymond and the public at large, the Iselins are actually Communist agents with a plan intended to secure the presidency under communist influence.
Mrs. Iselin is the "American operator" responsble for controlling Raymond, who was conditioned in Manchuria to be an unwitting assassin whose actions are triggered by a Queen of Diamonds playing card. When he sees it, he will obey the next suggestion or order given to him by anyone. When given instructions to kill selected targets, he must also kill any witnesses and never remember his actions, making him the perfect assassin. It is revealed that Shaw's heroic action was a false memory implanted in the platoon by the communists in Manchuria, and that they were covertly returned to the American lines when their conditioning was completed; the actions for which Shaw was awarded his Medal of Honor never took place.
Raymond briefly finds happiness when he rekindles a youthful romance with Jocelyn Jordan (Leslie Parrish), the daughter of Senator Thomas Jordan (John McGiver), one of his stepfather's political rivals. Raymond had previously courted Jocelyn in order to get at his parents in a Romeo and Juliet-style romance, but they then genuinely fell in love, both she and her father being the nearest thing Raymond has ever had to having friends. Mrs. Iselin broke up the relationship for obvious political reasons, but now facilitates the couple's reunion as part of her scheme to garner the support of Senator Jordan for her husband's own sudden vice presidentialbid.
Jocelyn, wearing a Queen of Diamonds costume outfit, inadvertently hypnotizes Raymond at an elite costume party thrown by the Iselins and the couple elopes. Although pleased with the match, Senator Jordan makes it clear to Mrs. Iselin that he will move for her husband'simpeachment if he makes any attempt to seek the vice-presidential nomination. Raymond's conditioning is then triggered by his mother and he is sent to assassinate Jordan. Jocelyn happens upon the scene and is also shot dead as a witness to the event. Raymond has no knowledge of his actions and is genuinely grief-stricken when he learns of the murders.
In the course of Marco's investigation, he discovers the role of the Queen of Diamonds card in putting Raymond into the hypnotic state for his assignments. Marco meets Raymond and, using a trick deck composed entirely of such cards, gets the full story and orders Raymond to break the links between the card and obeying any further subsequent orders. Unaware of this, Mrs. Iselin primes her son to assassinate their party's presidential candidate at the nomination convention so that Senator Iselin, as the vice-presidential candidate, will become the presidential candidate by default and give an inflammatory anti-Communist speech (written by the Communists themselves). This will cause mass hysteria that will get Iselin, "the Manchurian candidate", elected and justify such emergency powers that, in Mrs. Iselin's words, "will make martial law seem like anarchy".
In a cynically moving scene, Mrs. Iselin asserts that she did not know that it was her son who was to be selected by the Communists, who apparently chose him to be the assassin because they believed it would solidify their own hold and control over her. Furious, she vows that once in power she will "grind them into the dirt". She proceeds to give her "hypnotized" son a decidedly non-maternal kiss.
Marco's attempt to free Raymond appears to have failed. Raymond enters the convention hall disguised as a Catholic priest and takes up a position to carry out the assassination as he was instructed, using a rifle with a scope. Marco and his supervisor, Colonel Milt (Douglas Henderson), arrive at the convention to stop him. As the Presidential nominee (Robert Riordan) makes his speech, Raymond instead takes his revenge by shooting his stepfather and mother dead. He then commits suicide in front of Marco while wearing his Medal of Honor.

[edit]Cast

[edit]Production

For the role of Mrs. Iselin, Sinatra had considered Lucille Ball, but Frankenheimer, who had worked with Lansbury in All Fall Down, suggested her for the part[1] and insisted that Sinatra watch the film before making any decisions. (Although Lansbury played Raymond Shaw's mother, she was in fact only three years older than actor Laurence Harvey.)
An early scene where Raymond, recently decorated with the Medal of Honor, argues with his parents was filmed in Sinatra's own private plane.[1]
During the fight scene between Frank Sinatra and Henry Silva, Sinatra broke his hand during a movement where he smashed through a table. This resulted in problems with his hand/fingers for several years and is said to be one of the reasons why he pulled out of a starring role inDirty Harry, having to undertake surgery to alleviate pains.
The interrogation sequence where Raymond and Marco confront each other in the hotel room opposite the convention are the rough cuts. When first filmed Sinatra was out of focus and when they tried to re-shoot the scene he was simply not as effective as he had been in the first take (a common factor in Sinatra's film performances). Frustrated, Frankenheimer decided in the end to simply use the original out-of-focus takes. Critics praised him for showing Marco from Raymond's distorted point-of-view.[1]
In the novel, Mrs. Iselin uses her son's brainwashing to have sex with him before the climax. Concerned that censors would not allow even a reference to such a taboo subject in a mainstream motion picture of the time, the filmmakers instead opted for Mrs. Iselin to simply kiss Raymond on the lips to imply her incestuous attraction to him.[1]
For the scene in the convention hall prior to the assassination, Frankenheimer was at a loss as to how Marco would pinpoint Raymond Shaw's sniper's nest. Eventually he decided on a method similar to Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (made in 1940). Frankenheimer notes that what would be plagiarism in the 1960s would now be looked upon as an homage.[1]

[edit]Releases

Hollywood rumor holds that Sinatra removed the film from distribution after the John F. Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963. Strictly speaking, the film was not completely removed from distribution, as is proved by Time magazine's archives section online.[2] Certainly the film was rarely shown in the decades after 1963, but it did appear in the CBS Thursday Night Movie series on September 16, 1965 and once more later that season. In the 1970s, it was shown twice on NBC, in the spring of 1974 and summer of 1975. This, however, is almost certainly substantially less airplay than most other movies of the same period received. It has also been said that Sinatra did not acquire distribution rights to The Manchurian Candidate until the late 1970s. This claim has been offered as evidence that he did not withdraw it for reasons of discretion, and that nobody else did either. However, he could easily have influenced such a decision without actually holding the distribution rights. In 1988, Sinatra then became involved in a theatrical re-release of the film. In recent years, the film has aired very occasionally on theTurner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics cable networks.
Michael Schlesinger, who was responsible for the film's 1988 reissue, maintains that the film's apparent withdrawal was unrelated to the Kennedy assassination. He says that the film was "simply played out" by 1963, and that the original deal with United Artists was for ten years (though uncompleted TV contracts were permitted to play off). Sinatra's then-attorney, who admittedly made a bad deal, elected not to renew, even though extending such contracts was common practice. It was not until Sinatra got a new attorney that a new deal was struck with UA (now absorbed into MGM). According to this scenario, the 1963 assassinations of Medgar Evers and President Kennedy played no role in the film's near-disappearance for decades.[citation needed]

[edit]Reception




[edit]Critical response

It has received a 98 percent rating from the Rotten Tomatoes website, based on 48 reviews.[3] Film critic Roger Ebert ranked The Manchurian Candidate as an exemplary "Great Film", 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".[4]
Janet Leigh plays Marco's love interest. A bizarre conversation on a train between her character and Marco has been interpreted by some—notably film critic Roger Ebert[4][5]—as implying that Leigh's character, Eugenie Rose Chaney, is working for the Communists to activate Marco's brainwashing, much as the Queen of Diamonds activates Shaw's. It is a rather strange conversation between people who have only just met, and almost appears to be an exchange of passwords. Frankenheimer himself admits that he had no idea whether or not "Rosie" was supposed to be an agent of any sort; he merely lifted the train conversation straight from the Condon novel, in which there is no such implication.[1] The rest of the film does not elaborate on Rosie's part and latter scenes suggest that she is simply a romantic foil for Marco.

[edit]Awards and honors

Angela Lansbury was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress, and Ferris Webster was nominated for Best Film Editing. In addition, Lansbury was named Best Supporting Actress by the National Board of Review and won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
The film was No. 67 on the AFI's "100 Years...100 Movies" when that list was compiled in 1998, but in 2007 a new version of that list was made which excluded The Manchurian Candidate. It was also No. 17 on AFI's "100 Years...100 Thrills" lists. 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".[citation needed]
In April 2007, Angela Lansbury's character was selected by Newsweek as one of the ten greatest villains in cinema history.

[edit]Home media

For the DVD release, the film's rating was changed from PG to PG-13, by the MPAA.
On the DVD audio commentary of the film, the director stated his belief that it contained the first-ever karate fight in an American motion picture. This is true inasmuch as this was the first fight scene in an American film in which a karateka faced off against a karateka; however, the 1955 MGM film Bad Day at Black Rock featured a fight scene between a conventional fighter, played by Ernest Borgnine, and a karate expert, played by Spencer Tracy.

[edit]See also


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