- Each and every soldier who served alongside Korean War veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) insists that he is "the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." In fact, they all use precisely those words. Strange, then, that Raymond comes across almost exclusively as an aloof and embittered misanthrope. Normally, I'd say he's the sort that only a mother could love, but with Raymond's mother (Angela Lansbury) even that is no guarantee. As fellow veteran Ben Marco (Frank Sinatra) eventually brings himself to explain, "It's not that Raymond Shaw is hard to like. He's impossible to like!"
- To its great credit, The Manchurian Candidate provides several early scenes that hint at how this discrepancy between Raymond's reputation and personality has come about. The audience witnesses the capture of Raymond's platoon and their subsequent brainwashing by Chinese mastermind Dr. Yen Lo (Khigh Dhiegh), and we even watch sinister Communist agents (Albert Paulsen, Reggie Nalder) transform into elderly horticulturists right before our eyes. In fact, in a subtly funny detail, Corporal Melvin (James Edwards) imagines exclusively black women, while his fellow soldiers see only their white counterparts. The crucial omitted detail, however, is why all of these elaborate plans are being laid. It's obvious that Communists want to place a highly trusted programmable assassin in America, but who is their ultimate target?
- In the meantime, Raymond's mother is busy propelling her alcoholic husband, Senator John Iselin (James Gregory), toward the forefront of the vice presidential race. Iselin's buffoonish behavior comes across as a bit too broad until you contrast it with actual speeches by his obvious inspiration, real-life Senator Joe McCarthy. Suddenly reading off numbers of Communists from ketchup bottles doesn't seem all that implausible. Nonetheless, it's not initially clear how Iselin's political ambitions are going to intersect the parallel story about Raymond's brainwashing and Major Marco's nightmares, nor is it at all obvious whether Marco's innocent-looking love interest, Eugenie Rose (Janet Leigh), is really what she seems. With Communist agents, unwitting assassins, and their secret American handlers in our midst, who indeed can be trusted?
- The thematic brilliance of The Manchurian Candidate is of course its suggestion that those who boast patriotically and loudly denounce their enemies are themselves likely to be far more dangerous than the people they're attacking. With the film's abundant Lincoln imagery and the aforementioned McCarthyism connection, it's not difficult to imagine which political party of the 1960's and today the film has in mind. As the plot careens further through an eerie maze of conspiracy, it takes some remarkably twisted and dark turns, especially involving the fates of Raymond's new wife (Leslie Parrish), her father (John McGiver), and Raymond's ever-domineering mother. In fact, modern audiences who know Angela Lansbury exclusively from Disney films and Murder, She Wrote should see her in the film's most chilling scene in which she curses the Communists (primarily for underestimating her) just before giving her son a truly creepy kiss goodbye.
- In this seemingly interminable election season, I had wanted to joke that The Manchurian Candidate's most shocking moment was the revelation that political party conventions were once exciting and interesting affairs, but that would be a disservice to the film's amazing ending. Cinema has had no shortage of terrifically suspenseful assassination scenes (The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Day of the Jackal quickly come to mind), and this film contains one of the best. That it is led up to by John Frankenheimer's uniquely disorienting and occasionally even out-of-focus direction makes it a truly riveting and stark culmination of affairs. Add in excellent performances by Lansbury, a sweat-soaked Sinatra, and the characteristically sour Harvey, and you can see why The Manchurian Candidate is a great film. And one that will force you never to look the same way at a game of solitaire again.
- Based on the even more disturbing novel by Richard Condon.
