Transcription
Today I want to talk about The Manchurian Candidate, a 1962 film from John Frankenheimer. John Frankenheimer is kind of a legend, an unsung vulgar aurist. An aur in the same way that McHugh or Wowskis or Dealma, I guess Dealma and Frankenheimer have have a lot of similarities. Frankenheimer just wasn't as weird with it.
Frankenheimer was behind Black Sunday, Birdman of Alcatraz, The Grand Prix, The Train, but The Manchurian Candidate is probably his most famous film, which is a political thriller about communism and brainwashing. Essentially, Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw gets brainwashed during his stint as a prisoner of war in communist China. And when he gets back to America, he's made the pawn in a presidential nominee assassination attempt. And the idea is that through this attempt, they might be able to overthrow the government to an international communist rule.
This movie is bonkers, but for that matter, it's also very dramatic and taken very seriously. This movie stars Frank Sinatra, of all people, in that lead role. This kind of functions as a neo-noir in a sense, and he kind of fits that old Cagney model or Bogart, a stoic, sunken eye, square jaw, strong resolve. That's a that's sort of a gumshoe type of a of a character, but in this case it's a little bit more dynamic than that. Again, neo-noir. Lawrence Harvey, Henry Silva, Janet Leigh, and Angela Lansbury also all star in this. And it's all just so epic.
This movie was also released circa the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet hostility, kind of all surrounding that. It might have stoked more controversy, but I think it was a it was a harbinger of more conversation to be had about Soviet-US relations, how we look at each other. I mean, there's something to be said. Pauline Kael called this the most sophisticated political satire to ever come out of Hollywood. So, there's that. It It's arresting. That's the great word for it.
I don't think you want to miss this one. If you've never seen this before, please check it out. I think it's always very enlightening to see situations like unto our own on screen. No matter how fantastical they may be interpreted, we can see our own screwishness in the screwball of political satire. Thank you guys for watching. This is Turner Classic Companion, your one-stop shop for what's on TCM and the Criterion Channel. Thank you so much.