The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)
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The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1994.
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The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American neo-noir psychological 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 stars Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury.
Why It Rocks
- Richard Condon's novel disguised relatively serious themes of political corruption, consumer and military brainwashing, and Cold War espionage with lurid sexual subplots and sadistic violence, to the point where Condon himself considered the book a satire, with its fast pace and a visual writing style. When the book was being adapted to film, Frankenheimer -- the director -- thought that the story captured the hysteria that gripped politics during the McCarthy era, and wanted those parallels within Condon’s book emphasized.
- The film goes for a documentary look with it's black-and-white style, and occasional filming from handheld cameras.
- Surprisingly skilled acting from the main cast.
- Angela Lansbury was selected to play the mother Eleanor Iselin, due to being an accomplished stage and screen veteran who stole the show very easily. Despite only being three years older than Laurence Harvey, she played his mother with an authority and conviction that were mesmerizing.
- Screenwriter Axelrod was hindered by a lot of the novel's aspects, and so resorted to using various screenwriting techniques such as voice-overs and flashbacks.
- In addition to that, various changes were made from the novel which benefited the film --such as the mother’s heroin addiction being removed, a black character being added to the platoon in the story, and the ending being altered to make Raymond Shaw more sympathetic -- and yet, the film still brings the novel to life very well.
- Like the book, which dashes through several writing styles, Frankenheimer employed a variety of techniques in making the film:
- A pre-credit Army patrol and a Congressional hearing later in the story are filmed with documentary precision.
- A brainwashing sequence early in the movie features a 360-degree pan, remarkable enough in itself, but even more impressive because Frankenheimer uses it to dismember reality. The scene ends up incorporating three different versions of “truth,” then starts to bleed one into the other until it seems as if everything is a hallucination.
- Frankenheimer employs jarring jump cuts and montages, but also lets scenes play out in single takes that can last over a minute. For deep-focus shots, “it was terribly important that we understood that we were in this position” in the frame.
- Explicit connections were drawn between Senator Johnny Iselin and Senator Joe McCarthy, as the director had James Gregory (John's actor) imitate McCarthy's blustering bravado and repeat his catchphrases.
- Additional themes are treated more subtly, such as the suggestion that society was being brainwashed by television. Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard we're both influences on Frankenheimer, but he had his own style. The film offers a nightmare world rooted in realistic detail, one whose savvy about how society operates was far more advanced that what Hollywood usually presented in its social critiques. Not even Hitchcock wanted to be this cynical.
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