A special brand of American movie emerged during the Cold War that I call the “paranoid thriller.” It started in the ‘50s as Hollywood’s way of exploiting the “Red Scare,” the fear and hatred of communism at home and abroad. As political events became more chaotic and disturbing in the ‘60s and ‘70s, these films began to reflect popular suspicion of U.S. government covert actions and conspiracies. Produced right on the cusp of these two phases was an amazing suspense film, from 1962: The Manchurian Candidate.
Screenwriter George Axelrod, fresh from great success with his adaptation of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, proposed to his friend, the director John Frankenheimer, that they adapt a recent spy novel called “The Manchurian Candidate” by Richard Condon, about a hypnotized assassin. None of the studios wanted political movies that could be controversial, so they wouldn’t touch it. But it got made anyway because of one man, Frank Sinatra, who wanted to produce and star in the film. Without him, it would never have happened.
Sinatra plays a Korean War veteran, Bennett Marco, who is having persistent bizarre nightmares. In an extraordinarily radical dream sequence, we see Marco and the platoon members with whom he was captured in Korea sitting on a stage in a New Jersey hotel lobby during a ladies garden club meeting. An older woman is lecturing the audience about hydrangeas while the soldiers on stage look passive and bored. The camera does a 360 degree pan through the audience of women in the lobby. When we come full circle, instead of the lecturer there is a Chinese officer standing between a picture of Stalin and Mao, explaining how the soldiers are being brainwashed through hypnosis. The weird humorous aesthetic of this scene with the banal garden club has a strong creepy effect that is sustained throughout the movie.
After waking up, Marco starts to piece together memories which end up focusing on the platoon’s commanding officer, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, who was awarded the Medal of Honor on his return from Korea, and is played by Laurence Harvey. The film’s most famous touch, darkly humorous, is that whenever the surviving members of his platoon are asked about him in the States, they all say the same thing: “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I have ever known.” Turns out Shaw can be put into a hypnotic state by his handler, carry out orders to kill, and then later forget what he’s done. His handler is his own mother, played by Angela Lansbury, who is using him to eliminate a rival to her new husband, a senator, presidential candidate and secret asset of the Chinese. Condon put a little satiric twist into the story by making the senator, played in the film by James Gregory, campaign as a rabid anticommunist in the Joseph McCarthy mold.
I’m not a big fan of Sinatra as an actor, but he’s really good in this, the best performance of his career, I think. For once, Laurence Harvey is perfect because he’s playing a scary cold fish type. Janet Leigh does good work as the romantic interest for Sinatra. Lansbury got Oscar nominated for her supporting role. It’s a strange story, a strange film, but once you’ve seen it, you’ll never forget it. Don’t bother with the 2004 remake. The original 1962 classic The Manchurian Candidate is the real deal.
