FANTASIA OBSCURA: Sinatra, Lansbury and a Political Thriller That Continues to Resonate Today
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you should not ask “What were you thinking?” Trust me, you were better off NOT knowing that answer…
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Distributed by: United Artists
Directed by: John Frankenheimer
Sure, we’ve seen fiction sometimes get there before reality does, but this!
The film starts cold with a title card saying “Korea 1952” as we watch an army truck driven by Sargent Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) drive through the night, his commander Captain Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) beside him. The truck rolls up to a “party place” where the men of his unit are blowing off steam, where Shaw musters the men with a harsh whistle, earning yet more scorn from them.
The unit deploys on patrol and comes under heavy fire. Desperate, they take suggestions from their interpreter, Chunjin (Henry Silva), on how to get out from being pinned. We then watch as the unit gets ambushed, knocked out, and lifted out of the area by Soviet Spetsnaz troopers, who we see had set up the ambush with Chunjin’s help, before we get to the credits.
We then find out through narration provided by Paul Frees that Marco’s unit got home, and for his bravery and action Shaw is recommended by his commander for the Army Medal of Honor. This gets put to maximum use by Shaw’s ambitious and deviously savvy mother Eleanor (Angela Lansbury) on behalf of Raymond’s step-father, Senator John Iselin (James Gregory). The disgust Raymond feels for both parents is palpable, and the way she manipulates the press and her family doesn’t garnish her a lot of sympathy.
We hear through Frees’ narration that Marco has since then been promoted to Major, and now works in Army Intelligence. However, things are not going well for him, as we watch Marco have a recurring nightmare:
These horrific scenes include watching as Shaw personally murders the two men who supposedly were killed in action on the mission that got him his commendation. Marco is unable to shake what he goes through every night, and his constant anxiety forces the brass to reassign him to public relations, where on his first day on the job he gets flummoxed by Senator Iselin’s charges that there are Communists in the Department of Defense.
While Marco’s world crumbles, Shaw’s seems to be coming together: Nice job in New York, decent apartment on Riverside Drive. The only bad thing appears to be the way he can be manipulated with just a code phrase and a deck of cards:
Before he falls apart entirely, Marco meets and sweeps off her feet Eugenie Rose Chaney (Janet Leigh), although as he’s rather damaged by his experiences, she comes on strong after him and draws him out of his downward spiral. On the road to recovery, Marco starts to piece together what his nightmares mean: That he and his unit were part of a Soviet plot to install sleeper agents in the US, using brain washing to get them to do what they want.
This is something Marco figures out when Shaw accidentally gets his hands on a deck for a game of solitaire, and gets the suggestion to go jump in the lake after overhearing a bartender’s tall tale. Which Shaw does in front of Marco, literally.
As the investigation continues, Marco gets Shaw to open up about his life and his past. He reveals that before he entered the army and became a dislikeable Sargent, he had a love affair with Jocelyn Jordan (Leslie Parish), the daughter of a political rival of his mother’s. When his mother broke up the affair, that made Shaw the broken man Marco had always known.
So when his mother suggests that he reach out to Jocelyn again, every warning bell should go off in Shaw’s head that she may be doing it to get after Jocelyn’s father, Senator Jordan (John McGiver). However, tragedy is assured after one hand of solitaire, with horrific consequences:
By this point, the film’s premise of a brainwashed and easily controllable asset for the Soviets to destabilize the country during a presidential election hurtles forward at breakneck speed. Even if the science behind mental programming suggests it’s a lot harder than it looks, the pacing of the film and the tight script by Richard Condon and George Axelrod, based on Condon’s novel of the same name, keeps you riveted as new twists and turns come through.
The biggest shock comes as we follow the character of Eleanor Shaw Iselin. Lansbury’s manipulative and vicious manners makes her the perfect character to root against, and just when you think you can’t stand her any more, she has something new handed her in the script to make her even worse. She revels so deeply in playing such an antagonistic villain, that viewers that may only have seen her in Murder, She Wrote may have a hard time believing the actress is one and the same.
While Lansbury grabs our attention, the rest of the cast is equally worthy of note. There isn’t a weak performance in the film, and Sinatra’s giving Marco all sorts of shakes as he deals with his deep PTSD makes him a compelling lead as he plays against his brand. While his singing is the basis for his fame, he’s equally well known for his acting, and this is among Sinatra’s better regarded performances, alongside his work in From Here to Eternity and The Man With the Golden Arm.
Of special note as well is Frankenheimer’s directing. His use of extensive hand held and tracking shots to build the tension and immerse the viewer in the scene practically foreshadows most modern film making techniques used through the next century. His extensive and natural-feeling use of location shots, including the old Madison Square Garden built in 1925, gave the film considerable power.
In terms of the power of the film, it certainly left an impression on many viewers despite its limited distribution. There were rumors that Sinatra, as producer of the film, pulled it out of circulation after Kennedy’s assassination out of sensitivity concerning themes found in the picture (which was also assumed about Sinatra’s film Suddenly wherein he portrays a presidential assassin), but the film actually did have some distribution on network television during the 1960s. The main hiccup, however, was Sinatra getting distribution rights back from UA in 1972 and not having the means or wherewithal to keep the film widely distributed. The picture got such limited exposure that its getting a new theatrical release and syndicated TV presentation in 1988 was erroneously described as the “rediscovery” of the film.
As for its foreshadowing… In the past, there have been people who have suggested at times that a candidate running for office who was suspected of having a hidden agenda was copying this movie. However, with the disaster of the Helsinki summit still shaking millions of observers and the general sense that the American-built post-war world is being dismantled by the current administration, there’s every incentive to feel that had the Communist plan in The Manchurian Candidate been pulled off, that this would be what the end result of the film would look like.
And it’s very hard not to make an obvious comment here…
NEXT TIME: August is when Parisians usually flee the city for the month; pity those that ended up here…
