Pros: A dark, funny, exciting political thriller with echoes resounding to this day.
Cons: Some people may not care for its message or bleak vision.
The Bottom Line: THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is the most artistically renowned (if least influential) political thriller ever made in Americ because few people were able to see it for 25 years.
Some films have a kind of internal life. I recently discussed one such in a long meditation on Alfred Hitchcock's *VERTIGO (1958). Another such is THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962), John Frankenheimer's first important film.
In the year VERTIGO came out, Orson Welles was making his last studio movie, *TOUCH OF EVIL, based on Whit Masterson's novel Badge of Evil. (Did you recognize that pun and the homage in LA CONFIDENTIAL?) For the role of the motel clerk, Welles hired Dennis Weaver, a young actor then playing "Chester" on TV's Gunsmoke. After watching him rehearse a scene or two, Welles, as was his wont, closed down the set and took Weaver for a long lunch. According to Weaver, the motel clerk's character, his appearance, his movements, mannerisms, twitches, were worked out during that lunch.
Two years later, Alfred Hitchcock directed PSYCHO, in which Anthony Perkins created Norman Bates, the much more famous motel clerk, who said: "A boy's best friend is his mother."
The point is that in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, two years later yet, we have the mother dominated Raymond Shaw (Lawrence Harvey, all stares and twitches), the psycho, the lone nut raised to the National political stage. (It may go too far to note that near the end of his career, Harvey worked for Orson Welles, in a never released film, THE DEEP [1967- ], about . . . a lone nut murderer marooned on a boat at sea, thus closing the circle.) THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is one of few films among many that the Lithuanian-born gay actor Harvey made in which he is effective, perhaps because, through much of the film, he has to show so little emotion, must hide so much.
And of course, in TOUCH OF EVIL, PSYCHO, and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, there is beautiful blonde Janet Leigh. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE even has two beautiful blondes, but the other one is Raymond Shaw's girlfriend (Leslie Parrish), and he murders her.
The political half-life of the movie is well known now, too. President John F. Kennedy was an obsessive reader of political thrillers. (He practically created the market for James Bond, when upon his election in 1960, he made it known the spy novels of Ian Fleming were among his casual reading.) He kept a keen eye, for more important reasons, on TV and Motion Pictures. He encouraged the making of several films and was fascinated with the power of his TV image. Both later movie directors Arthur Penn (BONNIE AND CLYDE, 1967) and John Frankenheimer had worked as media consultants in his successful campaign for the Presidency.
One day, at the White House, in 1961, President Kennedy asked Producer/Writer George Axelrod, and Director Frankenheimer who had just moved from TV to movies, what they were going to do next. Frankenheimer said he was reading a bizarre novel by Richard Conden, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, and thought it might make a good movie. Kennedy had read it, of course, and urged him to do it, wanted to be kept informed. And so, we can see that, in a way, Kennedy arranged for a kind of blueprint for his own murder two years later.
No doubt the President's friendship with Frank Sinatra helped bring the singer-actor phenomenon on board. Sinatra's performance as guilt-hurt Major Bennett Marco is one of his strongest performances, stronger than his come back role in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953) or in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (1956). Here he is quiet, contained, and more compelling for his restraint.
George Axelrod made his reputation with his stage play, The Seven Year Itch, about a beautiful blonde (Marilyn Monroe, in the movie adaptation). One might reflect that in his outrageous, rule bending comedy, the hero considers murdering the girl [Monroe] to avoid exposure to the wrath of his wife, whom he identifies with his mother. Axelrod wrote the screen play for THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, and it is the best work he ever did for the movies. Several years later, he wrote and produced a movie for Jack Lemmon, HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE (1965), but in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, he was more subtle.
The pivotal character in the film is the devious, power-mad wife of Senator Iselin (James Gregory), hated step-father of Raymond Shaw. As played by Angela Lansbury, she is really the emotional engine that drives this macabre psycho drama. Daughter of a former leader of the British Labor Party, Lansbury seems to relish all the political in-jokes. (Her part is said to be modeled on Senator Joseph McCarthy's wife, who summed up her husband after his death from alcoholism by railing at people who talked of McCarthy's passionate causes: "The truth about Joe is the poor SOB didn't believe in anything!")
And so, we have a film about hidden secrets, hidden in personal lives, hidden in our National Life. It leads, in a way, to one of the enduring mysteries of our time: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Was there a conspiracy in the assassination of John F. Kennedy? and if so, why? And who took part in it?
Frank Sinatra, a man rumored to have mob connections, later felt betrayed by his friend President Kennedy. Sinatra was also a friend of Joe Di Maggio, a guarded man, also with mob ties, bitter towards the Kennedys for their treatment of the love of his life -- DiMaggio's former wife Marilyn Monroe, who died the year THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE was made. After Kennedy's Assassination, Frank Sinatra bought the rights to THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and did not it allow to be shown for the next 25 years. He evidently thought it had some influence, at least on the climate that produced another tough, bitter little man: Lee Harvey Oswald.
No doubt it is all a matter of coincidence. And yet it is uncanny . . . .
If you would like to read Macresarf1 reviews of films related to THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE or mentioned in the above review, copy, paste to your browser, and go to the following:
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