← Back to Reviews
in
The Manchurian Candidate, 1962
Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) returns from the Korean War a decorated hero, credited with saving the lives of many in his company. There's just one little problem: the heroic action that Shaw and his companions remember never happened. Instead, the men were captured and brutally brainwashed. As Shaw strives to handle the pressures of his life back home---including a ruthless mother (Angela Lansbury), a politician stepfather (James Gregory), and his love for a woman named Josie (Leslie Parrish)--he unwittingly acts as an assassin for a communist group. Meanwhile, one of Shaw's old squad mates, Major Ben Marco (Frank Sinatra) grows suspicious when he begins to suffer from strange dreams where Shaw does terrible, terrible things.
This was a very enjoyable, twisty-turny thriller, and I particularly enjoyed the fact that while I knew certain things about it via cultural osmosis, there were still several moments or plot elements that took me by surprise.
Overall the film is very strong and suspenseful, but the disorienting, unnerving sequence of Shaw and his companions being conditioned is a special kind of horror. The perception of the men is that they are a women's horticultural meeting, when in fact they are sitting in front of a panel of communist doctors and agents. The film alternates between the point of view of the men and the reality, to at times comedic effect (such as when one woman boisterously objects and a quick cut shows us that it's really a man in the front of the group). But as the sequence goes on, terrible things happen. Shaw is ordered to strangle one of the men. His victim objects, only to be told to hold still and cooperate. Later, Shaw is directed to shoot the squad's smiling, fresh-faced teenage member in the face. His fellow soldiers absorb this all with borderline boredom, yet these moments will torture them later in the form of unceasing nightmares.
Harvey makes for an interesting lead. Shaw is prickly and doesn't connect with the other soldiers. All of his peers have been brainwashed to say that he is a wonderful warm person---and one of the more tragic parts of the film is when Shaw reflects that this doesn't make sense, because the other men didn't like him. Sinatra is likable enough as Marco, who finds some common ground with Shaw because both of them have reason to believe that they may be going crazy, and find tremendous relief any time that they are able to connect some of the dots. Lansbury makes the biggest impression, though, as Shaw's power-hungry mother. She is a straight-up ice queen, and there's a giddy kind of suspense with her character as to whether she's involved with what is happening or just incredibly controlling.
If I had one criticism of the film, it's the extent to which the film at times throws in coincidences that feel a bit too far fetched. Characters with crazy connections just happen to meet-cute. Someone shows up to a fancy-dress party in a particularly relevant costume. I was more than happy to suspend disbelief for all of the hypnotism elements, but some of these other coincidences just felt a bit too out there in terms of the narrative reality of the film. And in the reverse of that: why was Janet Leigh in this film? She's just sort of . . . there, and it seems like a waste of her magnetism and intensity.
Frankenheimer's directing is kinetic and jarring. He manages to create sequences that combine incredibly upsetting visuals and actions with a kind of nonchalance and the effect is strong.
The Manchurian Candidate, 1962
Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) returns from the Korean War a decorated hero, credited with saving the lives of many in his company. There's just one little problem: the heroic action that Shaw and his companions remember never happened. Instead, the men were captured and brutally brainwashed. As Shaw strives to handle the pressures of his life back home---including a ruthless mother (Angela Lansbury), a politician stepfather (James Gregory), and his love for a woman named Josie (Leslie Parrish)--he unwittingly acts as an assassin for a communist group. Meanwhile, one of Shaw's old squad mates, Major Ben Marco (Frank Sinatra) grows suspicious when he begins to suffer from strange dreams where Shaw does terrible, terrible things.
This was a very enjoyable, twisty-turny thriller, and I particularly enjoyed the fact that while I knew certain things about it via cultural osmosis, there were still several moments or plot elements that took me by surprise.
Overall the film is very strong and suspenseful, but the disorienting, unnerving sequence of Shaw and his companions being conditioned is a special kind of horror. The perception of the men is that they are a women's horticultural meeting, when in fact they are sitting in front of a panel of communist doctors and agents. The film alternates between the point of view of the men and the reality, to at times comedic effect (such as when one woman boisterously objects and a quick cut shows us that it's really a man in the front of the group). But as the sequence goes on, terrible things happen. Shaw is ordered to strangle one of the men. His victim objects, only to be told to hold still and cooperate. Later, Shaw is directed to shoot the squad's smiling, fresh-faced teenage member in the face. His fellow soldiers absorb this all with borderline boredom, yet these moments will torture them later in the form of unceasing nightmares.
Harvey makes for an interesting lead. Shaw is prickly and doesn't connect with the other soldiers. All of his peers have been brainwashed to say that he is a wonderful warm person---and one of the more tragic parts of the film is when Shaw reflects that this doesn't make sense, because the other men didn't like him. Sinatra is likable enough as Marco, who finds some common ground with Shaw because both of them have reason to believe that they may be going crazy, and find tremendous relief any time that they are able to connect some of the dots. Lansbury makes the biggest impression, though, as Shaw's power-hungry mother. She is a straight-up ice queen, and there's a giddy kind of suspense with her character as to whether she's involved with what is happening or just incredibly controlling.
If I had one criticism of the film, it's the extent to which the film at times throws in coincidences that feel a bit too far fetched. Characters with crazy connections just happen to meet-cute. Someone shows up to a fancy-dress party in a particularly relevant costume. I was more than happy to suspend disbelief for all of the hypnotism elements, but some of these other coincidences just felt a bit too out there in terms of the narrative reality of the film. And in the reverse of that: why was Janet Leigh in this film? She's just sort of . . . there, and it seems like a waste of her magnetism and intensity.
Frankenheimer's directing is kinetic and jarring. He manages to create sequences that combine incredibly upsetting visuals and actions with a kind of nonchalance and the effect is strong.