It was the closest we would ever come to the Cold War becoming nuclear war, the climax of two decades of violent rhetorical posturing between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and right in the middle of it was this bizarre, prophetic, utterly absurd, yet calculatingly absorbing ... political thriller? Political satire? Both? The Manchurian Candidate was a film that sliced across the sensibilities of every group in its biting depiction of the American political circus and the hysteria of anti-Communism. It equally offended the American Legion, which saw it as evidence of long-suspected Communist infiltration of the movie industry (the blacklist was still in effect, after all), and the Communist Party itself, which denounced it. Although very much a product of the specific fears of its era—particularly Communist infiltration of the U.S. government and brainwashing—the film still feels taut, scathing, and paranoid because it cuts to the heart of mass fears and how those fears, whatever they may be, can be manipulated and exploited by the powerful—something that is no different today than it was in 1962.

Based on the 1959 novel by the soon-to-be prolific Richard Condon, whose books always revolved around political corruption and abuses of power, the story in The Manchurian Candidate concerns a group of American soldiers during the Korean War who are ambushed and taken prisoner by the Chinese for three days. During this time, they are brainwashed and made into pawns who can be controlled without their knowledge. When they are released, they have no idea what has happened, having been brainwashed into thinking that one of the soldiers, a generally unappealing man named Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), single-handedly saved the platoon from attack, an act of fictional valor for which he is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Of course, no one—especially Raymond—realizes that he is, in fact, not a war hero, but rather a programmed assassin, unable to resist orders once he sees his “trigger,” the Queen of Diamonds.

Another member of the platoon, Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), begins to have recurring nightmares about the brainwashing sessions. Once his suspicions are aroused, starts investigating, eventually unearthing an insidious plot involving the Chinese, the Russians, and Shaw’s red-baiting McCarthy-esque stepfather, Senator John Iselin (James Gregory), who is really just the spineless puppet of Shaw’s power-hungry mother (Angela Lansbury). The relationship between John Iselin and his wife is one of the film’s most wickedly humorous and unsettling, as it juxtaposes Iselin’s ravenous public persona, which is all fiery bluster and confidence, with his behind-the-scenes meekness. Mrs. Iselin orders him around like a child (at one point she literally tells him to run along because the grown-ups need to talk), and after he openly accuses the Department of Defense of being filled with Communists, he has to confer with her about the exact number of card-carrying Reds he “knows about” (the final number, 57, is drawn from a bottle of Heinz ketchup). The twisted nature of their union is contrasted with Shaw’s romantic involvement with Jocie (Leslie Parrish), the sweet-natured daughter of Senator Thomas Jordan (John McGiver), one of Iselin’s chief adversaries.

Director John Frankenheimer started his career in television in the 1950s, directing dozens of episodes of one-hour anthology dramas, particularly Playhouse 90 and Climax!, and it shows in The Manchurian Candidate. His penchant for long takes and complex tracking shots are descended from his experience directing live television episodes that unfolded in real time, and his behind-the-scenes knowledge of the medium informs his depiction of the televised pseudo-events surrounding Iselin and his trumped up charges of Communist infiltration. Frankenheimer often stages the press conferences so that we are seeing the characters both in the moment and on various monitors, thus reinforcing both the manufactured and the widely mediated nature of their actions.

Frankenheimer also displays an impressive command of his actors, drawing from Frank Sinatra a performance that the famous crooner would always call his best and turning Angela Lansbury, at the time a supporting player with no major roles, into one of the most sinister and chillingly manipulative villains of all time. In fact, Frankheimer’s command of the material is so complete that we don’t find ourselves questioning the gimmicky nature of the plot, the cartoonishness of the nefarious Communists, or even scenes that don’t seem to make much sense, especially a subplot involving Marco’s romantic involvement with a mysterious woman played by Janet Leigh. One might suspect that such scenes exist to make us feel just as confused and paranoid as the characters do or to introduce red herrings that distract us from the real dangers, but the plot charges ahead so relentlessly that there isn’t much time or energy to question.

At the time, the film’s dangers, which to us now seem exaggerated, if not downright ludicrous, felt very real. In particular, the idea of psychological manipulation by our enemies to turn Americans against their own country was a genuine concern, one that was originally stoked by anti-Communist U.S. journalist Edward Hunter, who coined the term “brainwashing” in a 1950 article in Miami News about its use by the Chinese. Interestingly, this was not the first Hollywood film to tackle the subject. In 1954, MGM released a little seen film called Prisoner of War starring Ronald Reagan in which American POWs are tortured and brainwashed by their Korean captors under the guidance of a Soviet colonel, although in that film the Americans bravely resist, rather than fall victim to, the techniques. (On a related note, Reagan would go on to narrate and host The Ultimate Weapon, a 1962 scare film funded by the libertarian Volker Fund about the Koreans’ use of brainwashing during the war.) The flashback scenes in which Shaw and Marco and the rest of the platoon sit placidly on a stage surrounded by Soviet brass and Chinese and Korean operatives, believing that they are in fact at a garden party hosted by innocuous ladies in sundresses and hats, is one of the film’s surreal highlights, although it also features some of its ghastliest violence as the Korean brainwashing techniques are proven when Shaw calmly complies with orders to first strangle one of his fellow soldiers and then shoot another one point-blank in the head (the brief flash of blood and brains splattering a poster of Josef Stalin behind the victim is surely one of modern Hollywood cinema’s first moments of such graphic violence).

For reasons that are still in dispute, The Manchurian Candidate was pulled from distribution after its successful theatrical release. Some have suggested that Frank Sinatra wanted to hide it away because he felt that the political climate after the Kennedy assassination didn’t allow for such a film to be in circulation. More benign explanations are simply that he didn’t want the film to be overplayed and that he had a contractual dispute with United Artists, the film’s distributor. The idea that the film disappeared for decades is a misnomer, as it played on television as The CBS Thursday Night Movie in 1965 and aired again in 1974 on NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies. It is true that the film was largely unseen prior to its being screened at the New York Film Festival in 1987 and finally released on home video in 1988, where it was embraced by a whole new generation who had heard of it, but never seen it. They delighted in its nakedly politically charge force, which makes it as enthralling as it is preposterous, asking you laugh at it and cringe at the same time. It is an unexpectedly witty film that thrills as much as it jabs, and its chilling satire holds up, much like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), like few films of its era do.

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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