The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Forty-five years after its premiere during the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962) remains the definitive Kennedy-era political thriller. Kennedy himself may even have helped to get the picture green-lit. The (possibly apocryphal) story goes that executives at United Artists balked at adapting Richard Condon’s novel because they feared the government would object to this tale of brainwashing, assassination, and communist infiltration. When Frank Sinatra, attached to play the lead, asked for his pal JFK’s opinion, the swinging president—a legendary consumer of popular fiction—apparently responded, “Who’s playing the mother?”

Angela Lansbury plays the mother with a scary, imperious conviction that should surprise anyone who knows her only as the nice old lady with the raincoat and the typewriter from Murder, She Wrote. Her son, Congressional Medal of Honor-winner Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), would give Norman Bates a run for his money in the Damaged Cinematic Mama’s Boys’ sweepstakes, and not simply because his mother likes to kiss him on the mouth when she isn't bullying or berating him. Among Mrs. Shaw’s many offenses are slandering a senator, breaking up Raymond’s youthful summer romance, and behaving rudely toward the Korean houseboy. She also permits her son to be hypnotized by communists and re-programmed as an assassin to aid in her resolute quest for world domination.

A clammy, absurdist satire that takes on communism, McCarthyism, heroism, patriotism, and Mom-ism, The Manchurian Candidate’s paranoia and scabrous wit endure as the War on Terror occupies the void left by the Cold War’s anticlimactic fade out. It’s tough to tell which is more bitter, the film’s conspiracy plot or its licorice-black humor. During the Korean War, a U.S. Army platoon led by Bennett Marco (Sinatra, in the performance of his career) and Raymond is taken prisoner, brainwashed by an international communist alliance, and then released to enable the eventual seizure of the American presidency. Two years later, Ben has become increasingly disturbed by his nightmare recollections of captivity and seeks out Raymond, who kills two fellow soldiers in these recurring dreams--and may have, Ben suspects, in real life. The aloof Raymond, unaware of his condition, is about to be turned over to “his American operators” for what we eventually learn will be the murder of the Republican presidential candidate during the party's convention. Raymond's buffoonish, red-baiting stepfather, vice-presidential-nominee John Iselin (James Gregory) will then step forward by design and, as Raymond’s mother predicts, the millions watching this horrifying spectacle unfold on live TV will “sweep us into the White House with powers that make martial law look like anarchy!”

“I think if John Iselin”—the film’s Joe McCarthy figure—“were a paid Soviet agent, he could not do more harm than he is doing now,” says dignified Senator Thomas Jordan (John McGiver), this mordant film’s respectable moral center. Of course, Iselin is a Soviet agent, although it's unclear how much of his wife's plan he understands. But the irony doesn't prevent the film from endorsing Jordan's sentiment. He indicts not only the potential villainy of flag-draped, God-and-country stupidity but also the hazards of liberal condescension. Anyone who’s spent time in America these past five years shouldn’t take such an attitude lightly.

We’re miles away from dreary Crucible-esque witch hunt allegory. The Manchurian Candidate never pretends that the international communist threat is anything but real—and possibly as dangerous as the threat of power-mad Americans. However, in a wonderfully subversive touch, the Chinese brainwashing expert Yen Lo (Khigh Dhiegh) is the story’s most genial, humorous character. Visiting New York, for instance, pleases him not only because he's there to set the long-planned coup in motion, but also because his wife has asked him to do some shopping at Macy’s. Of the many things The Manchurian Candidate accomplishes at least as well as any other Hollywood film of its day, this whip-smart mixture of tones is perhaps most impressive. Caustic, thrilling, enigmatic, broadly satirical, and shrewdly ironic, it’s both fresh and unquestionably of its time.

Frankenheimer, who got his start directing television, employs a post-classical style that's caused this picture to age better than most "hip" high-Sixties movies that followed. (Skinny ties and contempt for politics never really go out of style.) For the most part, the director prefers to undermine rather than abandon Hollywood norms. Interestingly, his preference for simply composed long takes--particularly between Sinatra and love interest Janet Leigh, whose character is as alluring as she is inscrutable--has much in common with more traditional elders like Hawks, Sturges, and Lubitsch. Yet Frankeheimer deviates in his close-ups, elbow-in-your-ribs symbolism (household Lincoln icons, an American flag made of caviar, etc.), the occasional zoom shot, and exaggerated realism, all of which can seem a bit loony--but just enough to convince viewers they're seeing something racy, vaguely forbidden. That's how Frankenheimer and screenwriter/producer George Axelrod coax acceptance for their outlandish premise.

The script is a model of intelligent construction. The narrative creeps along insidiously, rarely solving one riddle unless it can pose another, lampooning practically every conviction and convention the filmmakers can get their apprehensive hands on. There are bravura sequences such as the brainwashing demonstration, which opens with a mesmerizing 360-degree pan and then shifts hilariously between the actual, diabolical scene and the polite afternoon ladies' meeting the victims have been hypnotized to believe they're experiencing. Axelrod splits this unforgettable exhibition in two. Halving it sets up a superb joke about the unspoken differences between black and white people's imaginations and also allows this standout episode to straddle a heated press conference that, with its obstructed views and multiple television screens, is no less disorienting. Later, as the intrigue nears its climax, and the audience remains unsure whether Ben's attempts to de-program Raymond will prove successful, the film pauses, the camera hesitating over shots of unfurling campaign banners and a mostly empty Madison Square Garden. The resultant mood, simultaneously tense and calm, shows that the filmmakers are after more than simple excitement or mockery.

The Manchurian Candidate is cited regularly for uncannily forecasting the Kennedy assassination (maybe less so these days, as that pivotal event recedes into memory), but it seems more striking in its anticipation of the national mood after Dallas, Vietnam, Watergate, and so many other political calamities up through the present day. The democracy it envisions is sick, under siege from within and without, and can only be preserved at the expense of its citizens' welfare. The filmmakers know better than to try to provide consolation. It's their provocative blend of anguish, astringent comedy, and occasional tenderness that endures.