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'''The Manchurian Candidate''' is a 1962 movie about a Communist conspiracy to drug and hypnotize an American POW into assassinating a candidate for President of the United States. [[Frank Sinatra]] portrayed an army officer who uncovers the plot.
'''The Manchurian Candidate''' is a 1962 [[motion picture]] about a [[Communist]] conspiracy to drug and hypnotize an American [[POW]] into assassinating a candidate for [[President of the United States]].
== Cast ==
* [[Frank Sinatra]] as [[Captain (rank)|Captain]] (later [[Major (rank)|Major]]) Bennett Marco, [[United States Army|USA]], veteran of the [[Korean War]] and attached to Army G-2.
** [[Janet Leigh]] as Eugenie Rose "Rosie" James, a girl who takes an interest in Major Marco.
* [[Lawrence Harvey]] as former [[Staff Sergeant]] Raymond Shaw, USA, the chief suspect.
** [[James Gregory]] as [[United States Senate|Senator]] John Iselin, his stepfather and seeker of the nomination for [[Vice-President of the United States]].
** [[Angela Lansbury]] as Raymond Shaw's mother and Senator Iselin's wife.
** [[Henry Silva]] as Chunjin, a [[Korea]]n interpreter (and Communist spy).
* [[John McGiver]] as Senator Thomas Jordan, a political rival of Senator Iselin. He and Iselin despise one another.
** [[Leslie Parrish]] as Jocelyn "Jocie" Jordan, his daughter, in love with Shaw.
* [[Khigh Dhiegh]] as Dr. Yen Lo, chief consulting psychiatrist, Pavlov Institute, [[Moscow]], [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics|USSR]]
* [[James Edwards]] as [[Corporal]] Alan Melvin, USA, another veteran of Korea.
== Plot ==
{{spoiler}}
=== Prologue ===
On a dark night in Korea, Captain Bennett Marco and his patrol are ambushed, beaten senseless, and airlifted to a secret Sino-Soviet base in Manchuria, after their interpreter leads them into a trap. Three days later, the patrol reports in, except for two men who were killed. Captain Marco tells an incredible story of how his leading sergeant, Staff Sergeant Shaw, almost singlehandedly attacked an enemy machine-gun position and in the process killed an entire company of the enemy, and then led the patrol to safety. For this, Sgt. Show receives the [[Medal of Honor]].
=== Return from Korea ===
Upon his return from Korea, Shaw is horrified and disgusted to see that his mother and stepfather have organized a welcoming committee that behaves like a "disgusting three-ring circus." In fact, his stepfather, whom Shaw has always detested, is up for re-election and has used the Medal of Honor ceremony as political theater.
Captain Marco, freshly promoted to the rank of Major, is assigned to Army G-2 (i.e., Intelligence). But soon he is plagued by a chilling recurring dream: that not only was his story of Sgt. Shaw's heroism a lie, but in fact the patrol had been subject to [[brainwash]]ing, and that at a demonstration before several senior Soviet and Chinese officers, Shaw strangled one member of the patrol and shot another—which is to say, he personally murdered the very two men whom Marco would later list as killed in action.
The Army G-2 discounts his story and assigns him to the Public Relations Corps. This appointment proves disastrous, as Marco's assignment, the Secretary of Defense, loses his temper in a confrontation with Senator Iselin (who is a thinly-disguised parody of Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]], or rather the now-traditional [[liberal]] caricature of that real-life politician). Marco is reassigned to the G-2, who orders him to go away on leave. In his travels, he meets his eventual wife Rosie, who reaches out to him even though at first he tries to run away.
Marco is not the only member of the patrol to be plagued by a strange dream. Corporal Alan Melvin also dreams of sitting in a room full of Soviet and Chinese senior officers and other officials, and watching as Shaw strangles one of his buddies and shoots another at point-blank range. Melvin's wife encourages him to write to Shaw, which he does. Independently of one another, each man, when asked how he feels about Shaw, says in a monotone that Shaw is a wonderful person. The truth, however, is vastly different: Raymond Shaw, far from being attractive, is personally repulsive.
Marco traces Shaw to [[New York City]], where Shaw at first was the confidential assistant to a well-known newspaper columnist (probably suggested by [[Walter Lippman]]), and now writes the column himself after the columnist has been found murdered in his bed. When Marco finally comes to Shaw's apartment, he is horrified to confront Chunjin, the former interpreter to the patrol who was also present in the interrogation session that Marco recalls in his recurring dream. He lashes out at Chunjin and repeatedly roars questions at him about Raymond's obsessive behavior with his hands before he committed the murders, and why Chunjin himself was present, not as a captive, but as a capt''or''. He is arrested, but the G-2 vouches for him, and Rosie comes to take him home.
The G-2 then convenes a meeting of his staff and questions Marco more closely. Marco identifies two known Soviet and Chinese officials from his dream, and the G-2 announces that he believes Marco's story and has formed a joint [[CIA]]/[[DIA]]/[[FBI]] team to investigate Raymond Shaw. Marco is assigned to this team as military liaison.
=== The investigation ===
Marco concentrates on Shaw and even encourages Shaw to tell him a sad story: he had once met a lovely and kind young woman, the daughter of Senator Jordan, and his mother had written an offensive letter in Shaw's name and forced Shaw to sign it. The next day, Marco meets Shaw in a bar and finds Shaw playing a game of solitaire. Marco barely hears the bartender tell another customer a story of how he had encouraged his brother-in-law to take a [[taxicab]] to [[Central Park]] and jump in the lake. And then Marco is stupefied when Shaw does exactly that. Marco follows Shaw and arrives in time to see Shaw jump in the lake, but Shaw has no memory of having done this. Nevertheless, Marco now remembers that Raymond had been playing with an imaginary—or perhaps not imagionary—deck of cards at the bar.
Marco asks the other members of the special task force about this, and they conclude that Raymond Shaw is acting under an elaborate series of suggestions implanted in his mind through [[hypnosis]]. They also identify the likely trigger: the queen of diamonds, a symbol of his mother.
What neither Marco nor even Shaw himself realizes is that Shaw's own mother is his "American operator" who gives him his orders. His mother first arranges for him to meet Senator Jordan's daughter Jocelyn again and even to marry her. But when this fails to create any fellow-feeling between Senators Jordan and Iselin, Shaw's mother then gives Shaw an order to kill Senator Jordan, and to kill Jocelyn as well.
=== The unraveling ===
Shaw retains no memory of any of his "assignments." Such is the nature of his programming that he will kill on order and then forget that he has done so, so that he will have no guilty conscience. But finally Shaw himself is plagued with recurring dreams of the Manchurian interrogation session. In desperation he calls Marco, who meets Shaw at his apartment and brings with him a "forced deck" containing fifty-two queens of diamonds. Marco uses these to induce Shaw to confess to the following:
# The night action for which Shaw received the Medal of Honor never took place as reported.
# In fact, the entire patrol had been abducted and taken to a secret base, where specialists from the [[Ivan Pavlov|Pavlov]] Institute in Moscow hypnotized them all, but especially Shaw.
# Shaw murdered the two men whom Marco would later report as killed in action.
# Shaw then killed his columnist boss, purely as a test of his conditioning.
# Shaw did indeed jump in the lake at Central Park, after the bartender accidentally triggered his post-hypnotic suggestion.
# Shaw then killed Senator Jordan and the young woman whom he had married only twenty-four hours before.
# All of the above are part of a larger plan, though Shaw does not know the details.
Marco then takes a gamble: he displays all fifty-two queens of diamonds and then, in his command voice, tells Shaw that his days as a programmed assassin are over.
=== The final action ===
Marco orders Shaw to talk to his American operator, learn the details of the operation (which is connected with a major party nominating convention), and report back to Marco. Instead of reporting, Shaw gives every outward sign of continuing with his programmed assignment: to take a gun into a projection room and from that vantage point to shoot the Presidential nominee in the middle of his speech. His mother has arranged this so that Senator Iselin, nominated for Vice-President, can step forward and accept the Presidential nomination by default.
Marco, on the convention floor, spots the light from the projection room and races to that room as fast as he can get there. He arrives in time to see Shaw shoot, not the Presidential nominee, but Senator Iselin and his own mother. Shaw then puts on his Medal of Honor, and tells Marco that no one could possibly have stopped Senator Iselin and his mother, and that he had to do the job himself. Then, guilt-ridden over the shootings and all the other murders he has committed, Shaw puts the muzzle of his high-powered rifle to his own forehead and pulls the trigger.
=== Memorable quotations ===
When asked how he feels about Raymond Shaw as a person, Marco and Corporal Melvin both say: {{cquote|Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I have ever met in my life.}}
When Marco lashes out at Chunjin, he roars out these questions:{{cquote|What was Raymond doing with his hands? How did the old ladies turn into Russians? What were you doing there?}}
The trigger phrase for the hypnotic suggestions:{{cquote|Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?}}
The Presidential nominee says these words before Shaw fires the fatal shots:{{cquote|Nor would I ask of any fellow American, in defense of his freedom, that which I would not gladly give myself: my life before my liberty.}}
{{endspoiler}}
== Themes and Receptions ==
A key premise of the movie was that it was possible to [[brainwash]] an unsuspecting prisoner into committing [[murder]]:
A key premise of the movie was that it was possible to [[brainwash]] an unsuspecting prisoner into committing [[murder]]:
:... a tall, bald [[Communist Chinese]]/Korean doctor-spylord Yen Lo ... introduces the captured, passive and impotent men, all drugged and hypnotized [for] a public demonstration of the powers of [[hypnotism]] <ref name="filmsite"/>
:... a tall, bald [[Communist Chinese]]/Korean doctor-spylord Yen Lo ... introduces the captured, passive and impotent men, all drugged and hypnotized [for] a public demonstration of the powers of [[hypnotism]]. One reviewer called this premise "far-fetched".<ref name="filmsite"> "Although the film initially failed at the box-office and its plot was considered far-fetched, it anticipated the American obsession with conspiracy theories in the early to mid-60s." [http://www.filmsite.org/manc.html] </ref>
The movie featured a riveting performance by Angela Lansbury<ref>[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001450/ IMDB website]</ref> as the brilliant, controlling mother who manipulated both her husband and her son to realize her dream of a communist takeover of the [[United States]]. Her husband was a parody of Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]], who brandishes a list of 57 card carrying communists. The only reason for citing 57 members of this list is that Senator Iselin reads that number on a bottle of Heinz Ketchup.
The movie featured a riveting performance by Angela Lansbury<ref>[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001450/ IMDB website]</ref> as the brilliant, controlling mother who manipulated both her husband and her son to realize her dream of a communist takeover of the [[United States]]. Her husband was a parody of Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]], who brandishes a list of 57 card carrying communists.
== Recent remake ==
The movie was remade with [[Denzel Washington]] in the Sinatra role and [[Liev Schreiber]] as a the assassin controlled by a [[microchip]] brain implant. The villains in the remake are not communists, but simply people with a [[political agenda]].<ref>[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/manchurian_candidate/about.php 'Rotten Tomatoes' Plot Summary]</ref>
The movie was remade with [[Denzel Washington]] in the Sinatra role and [[Liev Schreiber]] as a the assassin controlled by a [[microchip]] brain implant. The villains in the remake are not communists, but simply people with a [[political agenda]].<ref>[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/manchurian_candidate/about.php 'Rotten Tomatoes' Plot Summary]</ref>
==Colloquial Usage==
==Colloquial Usage==
In modern day usage, to describe a political candidate as a "Manchurian Candidate" is to say that they are hiding their real beliefs in hope of being elected, and afterwords able to advance their hidden agenda. Barack Obama is frequently accused of being a Muslim Manchurian Candidate, by sources such as [http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=79411 WorldNetDaily] and others.
In modern day usage, to describe a political candidate as a "Manchurian Candidate" is to say that they are hiding their real beliefs in hope of being elected, and afterwords able to advance their hidden agenda. Barack Obama is frequently accused of being a Muslim Manchurian Candidate, by sources such as [http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=79411 WorldNetDaily] and others.
==Notes==
==Notes==
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Movies|Manchurian Candidate, The]]
[[Category:Movies|Manchurian Candidate, The]]