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The Manchurian Candidate


#371 - The Manchurian Candidate
John Frankenheimer, 1962



After a group of American soldiers return home from the Korean War, one of them starts to realise that another one of his number was actually brainwashed to be a sleeper agent.

While relatively conventional compared to Frankenheimer's later film Seconds, The Manchurian Candidate covers similar ground in being yet another example of a thriller that is primed to point out the insidious nature of both communism and McCarthyism with only the slightest elements of science-fiction thrown in to justify its storyline and expounding upon its themes. It displays Frankenheimer's capacity for creating somewhat disorienting yet captivating visuals early on with a sequence where the American platoon is being brainwashed by a cabal of communist leaders, which rapidly flits back and forth between the platoon's perception of what is happening and what is happening in reality. This much is realised by the film's nominal hero (Frank Sinatra), who keeps having horrid flashbacks to the procedure and remembering how the team's leader (Laurence Harvey) was effectively made into an unquestioning killing machine. Of course, by the time he realises that Harvey has already been commemorated as a war hero and is being primed for some sort of mission involving political intrigue.

The stark monochromatic photography does well to drain the film of any kind of warmth, even in situations where it seems like it would demand it such as the development of separate romantic relationships for both Sinatra and Harvey. The film is also pretty sparing when it comes to the use of music, letting the frankness of the imagery speak for itself - and speak for itself it does, as Harvey's actions do become more disturbing, especially when it is clear just how much his own mother (Angela Lansbury) is manipulating him even without the use of brainwashing. She definitely becomes a defining presence in an otherwise male-dominated film (even Janet Leigh's presence as Sinatra's companion seems rather inconsequential), though it's not like Sinatra and Harvey don't put in sufficiently wide-ranging performances of their own. Though some aspects date the film in all the wrong ways (Henry Silva playing a North Korean? Riiiiight), it's still a sufficiently compelling film that still proves striking and relevant even now.