The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Written by George Axelrod

Directed by John Frankenheimer

1998 List Ranking: 67

2007 List Ranking: NA - Removed

I first became aware of The Manchurian Candidate back in the early 2000’s, when its remake, starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, was being released. I recall that I rented it (from a VIDEO store, kids) and started to watch it, but I couldn’t really get into it. I don’t think I even finished it. So, I was moderately curious about this original film, but more so because it gave me a chance to see our third national grandmother (after Betty White and Julie Andrews) Angela Lansbury play a villain (since unfortunately I wasn’t old enough (or even alive) to see her in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (and have yet to watch the filmed tour starring her)). Her performance, which I’ll discuss more in a moment, was a highlight of what proved to be a wildly off-balance film.

Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey star as Major Marco and Staff Sargent Raymond Shaw

The Manchurian Candidate tells the story of a United States Army platoon that is captured by the Soviets and Chinese armies during the Korean War. There, Staff Sargent Raymond Shaw is unknowingly brainwashed, in an effort to act in the United States as a sleeper agent. Upon returning home, platoon-mate Major Marco slowly begins to uncover the truth, and must race against the clock to not only discover what has happened to Shaw, who or what his next target will be, and the identity of his American handler. Along the way, Shaw is exploited by his ambitious mother Eleanor for the gain of her husband’s political career.

Sinatra meets Leigh, a character who could easily have been cut from the film

I enjoy thrillers, including political ones (even though I’ll be the first to tell you that most politics goes over my head). However, The Manchurian Candidate didn’t quite land for me. It has a great beginning and a very exciting ending, but the middle of the film just drags on and on, with subplots that don’t really lead anywhere or have any major impact on the film; many of these could have easily been slightly rewritten and saved time and lost none of their emotional impact (if they had any, which not all of them do). Take, for example, the subplot of Major Marco (Frank Sinatra) meeting Rosie (Janet Leigh); they meet on a train, she becomes his girlfriend and they have a developing relationship. However, this subplot doesn’t go anywhere (the Wikipedia plot summary doesn’t even mention her until the final paragraph, and even then it’s just because she is present in the final scene), so the scenes of them meeting and building their relationship serve…what purpose? I can’t find one.

Shaw meets Jocelyn

Compare that with the extended flashback of Shaw’s to a girl he once fell in love with. The sequence details their meeting, their courtship, and the eventual interference of Eleanor (Angela Lansbury) in breaking the relationship up. This subplot does at least have an emotional stake in the story, humanizing the cold Shaw and providing further drama when the girl and her father, an opposing senator, reenter the story. However, the flashback sequence is just too drawn out and in the wrong place; just as the film starts going, everything stops to provide a flashback when one isn’t really needed. The girl, Jocelyn (played by Leslie Parrish), could have just been Shaw’s girlfriend from the outset. That actually would provide even more drama as she would not only have to try and understand what is driving Shaw’s strange behavior, but also would give more depth to Eleanor as the audience has to witness the lengths that she goes to to secure her husband’s future.

Angela Lansbury, easily the film’s best performance

The best performance in the film is clearly Lansbury, and luckily the film decides to go with the “less is more” approach with her. Her scenes are often short, but as the audience realizes just how many strings she has been pulling all along, her presence is felt quite often looming over everyone. The (SPOILER ALERT) reveal of her as her own son’s handler is a bit shocking, and the scene in which she explains how it happened is actually, bizarrely, somewhat sweet, considering that she has just given him the order to kill the presidential nominee. The other actors are okay: Sinatra is alright, Laurence Harvey as Shaw is appropriately cold and distant, and everyone else just seems to be there. There definitely aren’t any powerhouse performances, Lansbury included, but she was still great to watch.

The brainwashing sequence

The best part of the movie, in my opinion, comes rather early, as Sinatra’s Marco has a nightmare in which we, the audience, begin to learn of Shaw’s brainwashing. The opening shot of the sequence starts with the platoon seated behind a female speaker, droning on about hydrangeas. As the camera pans around the room, we see a variety of older women all listening intently, but when the camera returns full circle, we see the speaker has been replaced with a communist scientist, and that the pictures behind the platoon, initially showing flowers, now show other communist leaders. Throughout the sequence, the elements (the speakers, the attendees, the decor of the room) change and intermix; it was a really great way to show the blurring of reality and dream, between brainwashing and the truth.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, since this film was released in 1962, the scare of the Cold War permeates this film, and not just in the main plot of the Soviet’s sleeper agent. Eleanor and her husband seem to have a penchant for denouncing anyone who disagrees with them or stands in their way as a communist; I suppose that that felt like a much bigger deal than it does today. in context, that’s not a charge taken lightly, and I can only imagine certain audiences clutching their pearls that there could be secret communists as characters.

I wanted to like this film a bit more than I did, but I really think that the various middle subplots really hampered this film. The film runs just over two hours, but I could see this being tightened down by about 15 minutes and really having some good pacing. Perhaps the remake fixes this problem, but I also assume that it probably only made it worse.

FINAL GRADE: C+