| The Manchurian Candidate | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | John Frankenheimer |
| Screenplay by | George Axelrod |
| Based on | The Manchurian Candidate 1959 novel byRichard Condon |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Narrated by | Paul Frees[1] |
| Cinematography | Lionel Lindon |
| Edited by | Ferris Webster |
| Music by | David Amram |
| Color process | Black and white |
Production company | M.C. Productions |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 126 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2.2 million |
| Box office | $3.3 million (rentals,[a] original release) $7.7 million (gross, including re-releases) |
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 Americanneo-noirpolitical thriller film directed and produced byJohn Frankenheimer. The screenplay is byGeorge Axelrod, based on the 1959Richard Condon novelThe Manchurian Candidate. The film's leading actors areFrank Sinatra,Laurence Harvey, andJanet Leigh, with co-starsAngela Lansbury,Henry Silva, andJames Gregory.[2]
The plot centers onKorean War veteran Raymond Shaw, part of a prominent political family. Shaw isbrainwashed bycommunists 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. The group, which includes representatives of thePeople’s Republic of China and theSoviet 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,[3] at the height ofU.S.–Soviet hostility during theCuban Missile Crisis. It was widely acclaimed by Western critics and was nominated for twoAcademy Awards:Best Supporting Actress (Angela Lansbury) andBest Editing. It was selected in 1994 for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registry by theLibrary of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[4][5]
Soviet and Chinese soldiers capture a U.S. Army platoon during theKorean War, taking them tocommunist China. Three days later, Sergeant Raymond Shaw and Captain Bennett "Ben" Marco return toUN lines. Upon Marco's recommendation, Shaw is awarded theMedal 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 toArmy 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.
During captivity, Shaw was programmed as asleeper agent, who obeys orders to kill and immediately forgets having done so. His heroism is a false memory implanted during the brainwashing. Agents trigger Shaw by suggesting he playsolitaire; 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 (a clear parallel to the demagogic activities of SenatorJoseph R. McCarthy in the early 1950s). 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 North 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. 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 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 aforcing 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 entersMadison 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.
The title of the book and film thus refers not to the assassin Raymond but to Senator Iselin, a so-called anti-Communist whose political rise was actually engineered by means of a Communist plot originating in Manchuria, making Iselin the "Manchurian Candidate." Author Richard Condon intended his book partially as an ironic comment on the anti-Communist hysteria of "McCarthyism," although this aspect of the story was played down somewhat in the film version.
Sinatra suggestedLucille Ball for the role of Eleanor Iselin, but Frankenheimer, who had worked with Lansbury inAll Fall Down,[6] 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.[6]
Janet Leigh plays Marco's love interest. In a short biography of Leigh broadcast onTurner Classic Movies, her daughter, actressJamie Lee Curtis, reveals that Leigh had been served divorce papers on behalf of her father, actorTony 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.[7] 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.[6][7]
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 such asincest in a mainstream film at that time, the filmmakers instead had Eleanor kiss Shaw on the lips to imply her incestuous attraction to him.[6]
Nearly half the film's $2.2 million production budget went to Sinatra's salary for his performance.[8]
It is now commonly rated PG-13.
The Manchurian Candidate has been called one of the most "iconic" films of theCold War period, especially in its discussion of "mind-control."[9] With one of the major plot points being the popular Cold War myth that China was brainwashing US soldiers for communist purposes during theKorean War.[10] Political scientistMichael Rogin further cements the film in this time period by describing it as being "aKennedy Administration film." Rogin cites Sinatra's character within the film as being a "lonely Kennedy Hero," who works within the army bureaucracy towards reform.[11]
In the garden scene, pictures ofMao Zedong andJoseph Stalin are hung on the wall with aSoviet 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.[12] During their demonstration, the communist leaders refer to Raymond as "the mechanism" and "the weapon", which affirms the idea that communists only see people as gadgets that can be thrown away after their use.[12] 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".[12]
InThe 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.[12] In addition, Raymond Shaw’s mother only uses those around her, such as 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.[11] This is juxtaposed with loving, trusting, and open relationships such as those between Shaw and Jocelyn Jordan, and Marco and Cheyney.[12]
The Manchurian Candidate uses "science, the conditioned subject, and the moving image" to create a realistic framework for the existence of mind control.[13] Specifically, it plays on the idea of a "covert sphere" of communism within the US, mixing real life events with those out ofscience fiction.[14] This theme added to the growing suspicion of the US government, redirecting concerns of possible brainwashing toward the homefront.[11]Janja Lalich, a counter-cult sociologist,[clarification needed] notes that the term "brainwashing" used by this counterculture movement[dubious –discuss] was first made popular byThe Manchurian Candidate.[15][need quotation to verify] The ever growing fear that anyone, even a decorated soldier like Raymond Shaw, could be coerced unwittingly by communists contributed to the United States’ expansion of their own mind control experiments.[16] In 1975, a little over ten years after the release ofThe Manchurian Candidate, the fear of a US-funded mind control scheme would come true with the reveal ofProject 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.[17] 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."[18]
In the United States and Canada, for its original release,The Manchurian Candidate netted $3.3 million indistributor rentals,[a][19] against a budget of $2.2 million.[20] After Sinatra – who owned the film rights – allowed re-release in 1988, followed by other theatrical re-releases, the film has grossed $7.7 million.[21]
The Manchurian Candidate was praised by critics for its performances, direction, themes, satire, editing and visuals. On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 97% of 67 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.8/10. The website's 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."[22]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 94 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[23]
Critic Pauline Kael attributed the strength of the film less to its directing than to the power of its script.[24]
Writing an extensive retrospective analysis in 2003, film criticRoger Ebert addressed the many elements that led him to rateThe Manchurian Candidate one of the 'Great Movies' – films he gave his maximum 4 stars out of 4; he declared it "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".[25]
Scholars have usedThe 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".[26] Political scientistMichael Rogin concluded thatThe Manchurian Candidate "aims to reawaken a lethargic nation to a communist menace".[11] Humanities Center director [Timothy Melley] argued that "The Manchurian Candidate's deepest worry is neither communism nor anticommunism but embattled human autonomy."[14]
| Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academy Awards[27] | Best Supporting Actress | Angela Lansbury | Nominated |
| Best Film Editing | Ferris Webster | Nominated | |
| British Academy Film Awards[28] | Best Film from any Source | Nominated | |
| Directors Guild of America Awards[29] | Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures | John Frankenheimer | Nominated |
| Golden Globe Awards[30] | 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[31] | Best Supporting Actress | Angela Lansbury(Also forAll 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 StatesNational Film Registry by theLibrary of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[32] 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 byTime as one of the 25 greatest villains in cinema history.[33]
According to a false rumor, Sinatra removed the film from distribution afterJohn F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963. According to Michael Schlesinger, who was responsible for the film's 1988 reissue byMGM/UA, the film was never removed.[34] Newspaper display ads indicate that after the assassination,The Manchurian Candidate was rereleased less frequently or widely than other 1962 movies, but it was available. The movie played at aBrooklyn cinema in January 1964, and that same month inWhite Plains, New York,[35] and Jersey City, New Jersey.[36] It was televised nationwide onCBS Thursday Night Movie on September 16, 1965.
Sinatra's representatives acquired rights to the film in 1972 after the initial contract withUnited Artists expired.[34] The film was rebroadcast on nationwide television in April 1974 onNBC Saturday Night at the Movies.[37] After a showing at theNew 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.[34][38]
On March 15, 2016, The Criterion Collection issued a Blu-Ray of the film.[39] In June 2023, Kino Lorber issued a 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray of the film.[40]
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