Claustrophic and intense, John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate set the standard for paranoid thrillers. Based on the 1959 novel by Richard Condon and adapted for the screen by writer George Axelrod, The Manchurian Candidate tells the story of Korean POW Sergeant Raymond Shaw, played by Laurence Harvey, who becomes unwittingly involved in a Communist plot to overtake the United States. Shaw is brainwashed by the Koreans to assassinate the presidential nominee, thus leaving open a takeover of the United States through a puppet candidate, a Manchurian candidate. Despite the film's implausibility, it was a chilling account of Cold War fears in the United States. During the 1950s, there were many films, mostly science fiction popcorn thrillers, that used alien invasions and atomic-sized beasts as analogies for the Communist threat, but The Manchurian Candidate was one of the first films to take that topic on directly.
Along with Harvey, the film starred Frank Sinatra, playing Major General Bennett Marco; Angela Lansbury in a chilling, breakout performance as Harvey's power-mad mother, Mrs. Iselin; Henry Silva and Janet Leigh in a bizarre performance as Rose Chaney, a woman Marco meets during a train ride. All the performances in the film, particularly Lansbury's and Harvey's, push at the edges of paranoia, discomfort, and horror.
Frankenheimer, who cut his teeth directing television dramas, employs his skills as a director to great effect, heightening the claustrophic and paranoid nature of the material. Visual cues are used throughout the film, such as the image of the Queen of Hearts, which is also used as a visual tool to control Shaw; Abraham Lincoln, whose likeness appears in paintings, in a sculpture, and even in the masquerade costume worn by the character Mr. Iselin, Shaw's horrid stepfather, a Joseph McCarthyesque half-witted politician designated as the beneficiary of the communist takeover. One of Frankenheimer's most celebrated cinematic techniques in the film is the 180 degree camera angle used during a dream sequence. Brainwashed to think they are attending a lecture on the cultivation of hydrangeas at a garden club, the POWs perspective is shown when the camera spins across the room, revealing ladies in hats sipping tea and eating cake. As the camera turns and faces the POWs, the scene changes and the men are no longer at a hotel lobby where the lecture is supposedly taking place but in a bunker somewhere in Korea, where the mens' handler, a Korean communist, is now lecturing an audience about brainwashing techniques to an attentive audience.
The topic of the film was horrifying enough, but its most frightening aspect was the relationship between Shaw and his mother, Mrs. Iselin. Originally, the book's incestuous relationship between mother and son was much more straightforward, but the film, due to the times and the sensitive nature of the material, implied the sexual undercurrents between the two. When Mrs. Iselin sabotages Shaw's romance with Josie, the daughter of a political enemy of his mother's, it is less about Mrs. Iselin's hatred toward her political opponent, but about her need to control Shaw, including his sexuality. Toward the end of the film, Frankenheimer caps off this relationship by having Lansbury kiss Shaw on the mouth. This scene is significant for two reasons: first it finally reveals that Shaw's mother is his handler, and second because of the way in which Lansbury kisses Harvey. Frankenheimer instructed Lansbury to place her hand over their mouths, thus concealing the actual touching of lips. The scene is that much more horrifying for what it leaves in the viewers' imagination.
The film's subject on communist sleeper agents and presidential assassinations proved eerily prescient a year after its release when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. Even more eerie is the fact that The Manchurian Candidate was one of Kennedy's favorite films and was screened at the White House at the time of it's premiere. After the film fell out of circulation, rumors ran rampant that Sinatra, who had been a major Kennedy supporter, had taken the film out of distribution out of respect. Yet many television stations had screened the film in the years following its release, and it only fell out of circulation after the rights reverted to Sinatra in the 1970s. Sinatra's failure to keep it in distribution was most likely due to neglect than the sensitive nature of the material. In the late 1980s Sinatra had the film re-released.
The Manchurian Candidate won a Golden Globe award for Lansbury's performance in the Supporting Actress category. In 1994, the film was entered in the National Film Registry and landed in the number 17 spot in AFI's list of top thirty thrillers.
