|
The Manchurian
Candidate (1962)
In John Frankenheimer's classic, paranoid political
conspiracy thriller:
- the fitful and haunting nightmares experienced by
Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) after returning from wartime
("Night after night, the Major was plagued by the same re-occurring
nightmare") - terrible, unconscious memories of his experiences
in Manchuria when he was subjected to successful brainwashing;
he often woke up in a cold sweat
- the famous brainwashing/dream sequence in which Sgt.
Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) and then Captain Marco and their platoon
were present onstage at a ladies' garden club auxiliary meeting in
a small hotel; they had been conditioned, programmed, and manipulated
by a Pavlovian Chinese brainwasher to imagine that they were attending
a ladies' auxiliary meeting/tea party; the images switched between
the imagined, delusionary, conditioned point of view within the brainwashed
soldiers' heads and actual reality
|
|
|
Strangulation of Ed Mavole by Raymond Shaw
|
|
|
|
Raymond Shaw's Execution of Bobby Lembeck
|
- the camera began a slow, 360 degree, all-encompassing
circular tracking shot around the meeting to reveal that they were
part of a brain-washing demonstration within Manchuria - it began
with an elderly white woman, Mrs. Henry Whittaker, speaking tediously
from the stage on the topic of "Fun With Hydrangeas"
to an audience of about two dozen elderly ladies in floral hats who
were taking in the lecture on horticulture; when the camera returned
to the stage 360 degrees later after the cyclical camera movement,
a tall, bald Communist Chinese/Korean doctor-spylord Yen Lo (Khigh
Dhiegh) was actually in charge and had taken the woman's place
and voice - he introduced the captured, passive and impotent men,
all drugged and hypnotized, who were seated in front of giant poster/photographs
of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung, and watched from an amphitheatre
of ominous-looking foreign Asians
- the sequence of puppet-master Yen Lo calmly demonstrating
Raymond's emotionless killing capacity through the technique of programming
- by instructing Shaw to "strangle...to death" with a white
scarf Ed Mavole (Richard La Pore); the men sat placidly and bored
with no emotion, while Mavole was dutifully killed
- the odd completely positive phrase used by all of
the brainwashed Korean war veterans for describing their commander,
a Congressional Medal of Honor winner: ("Raymond Shaw is the
kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known
in my life")
- the scene of a televised press conference during
which Raymond's bitchy mother Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin (Angela Lansbury)
watched her 'Josephy McCarthy-ite' husband Senator John Iselin's
(James Gregory) diminutive image on a TV monitor, a Vice-Presidential
candidate, as he provoked his rival Secretary of Defense (Barry Kelley)
for making cuts in defense spending: ("I have here a list of
the names of 207 persons who are known by the Secretary of Defense
as being members of the Communist Party...I demand an answer, Mr.
Secretary. There will be no covering up, sir, no covering up. You
are not going to get your hands on this list. And I deeply regret
having to say...")
- the similar nightmarish dreams of another young Korean
War vet - former black Corporal Al Melvin (James Edwards) - who was
also startled awake after another horrendous dream involving the
garden party; in a second demonstration, the brainwashed Raymond
Shaw was also calmly directed to shoot - "through the forehead" -
the platoon's favorite, youngest member and "mascot" Bobby
Lembeck (Tom Lowell); so without hesitation or even a second thought,
Raymond pointed the gun at the camera - the smiling, trusting face
of the young soldier - and blew his brains out, and blood splattered
on the huge portrait of Stalin behind him
- the intriguing scene in the space between railcars
when Marco met and spoke to the mysterious, beguiling and attractive
Eugenie Rose Chaney (Janet Leigh) - during their weird, oblique conversation,
they talked about four US states, Columbus Ohio's football team,
railroad lines, and her two names (Eugenie and nickname Rosie) -
were they speaking in cryptic code?
- the transition from Senator Iselin's use of a bottle
of Heinz 57 Varieties ketchup bottle at dinner on his steak to his
public testimony in the Senate in the next scene that there were
definitely 57 card-carrying Communists in the Defense Department
- Marco's reaction when he saw Chunjin (Henry Silva)
at Shaw's apartment door - Chunjin was an
"Oriental gentleman" who served with Shaw in the Army and
was now Shaw's houseboy - Shaw suddenly recalled recessed memories
that Chunjin was the guide who had led the platoon into an ambush,
and they engaged in a lengthy karate fight
- in the Jillys NYC bar sequence, Shaw heard the triggering
words: "Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?" -
and after asking for a deck of cards, he turned over the Queen of
Diamonds at the same time that he coincidentally overheard another
conversation: "Why don't you go and take yourself a cab and
go up to Central Park and go jump in the lake?"
- and Shaw, now an automated, brain-washed zombie, proceeded to carry
out the order in the middle of winter
- at the costume party/ball at the Iselin's summer house
on Long Island, the opening image of a large American flag suddenly
having caviar scooped from its star pattern by Senator Iselin (dressed
as Abe Lincoln)
- the brilliantly-photographed, late-night assassination
sequence of Raymond's killing of his own father-in-law (Iselin's
political rival for VP) - left-leaning Senator Thomas Jordan (John
McGiver) (standing in front of the refrigerator, he bled milk from
a punctured milk carton instead of blood) and of his own new wife
Jocie Jordan (Leslie Parrish)
- the scene in which Marco attempted to de-program Shaw
by fanning an entire deck of 52 Queens of Diamonds in front of his
face: ("So the red Queen is our baby. Well, take a look at this,
kid. Fifty-two of them. Take a good look at 'em, Raymond. Look at
'em...The links, the beautifully-conditioned links are smashed. They're
smashed as of now because we say so, because we say they oughta be
smashed. We're bustin' up the joint, we're tearin' out all the wires,
we're bustin' it up so good all the Queen's horses and all the Queen's
men will never put ol' Raymond back together again. You don't work
anymore. That's an order. Anybody invites you to a game of solitaire
- you tell 'em: 'Sorry, buster, the ball-game is over!'")
- the sequence of Shaw's corrupt, monstrous and perverse
maternal figure, Mrs. Iselin, with an insatiable lust for power,
describing the task and arrangements for him while seated next to
Jocie's giant Queen of Diamonds costume - his mission was to assassinate
the Presidential nominee Benjamin K. Arthur (Robert Riordan) during
the political convention - a catastrophe that would advance Raymond's
step-father's political career and pave the way for a legal takeover
of the White House; as a symbol of her sincerity and love, she held
both sides of his face with her claw-like fingers while smothering
him with kisses on his forehead and right cheek - she ended with
a seductive, incestuous warm kiss on his lips
Mrs. Iselin's Corrupt and Lustful Power Over Raymond
|
|
|
|
- the final climactic sequence during the political
rally-convention in Madison Square Garden with Shaw disguised as
a priest, carrying a sniper rifle, and positioned in an upper,
unused spotlight booth at the convention center - and Marco's desperate
sprint to the top of the arena to prevent an assassination in the
making - arriving too late to prevent Shaw from firing on his own
step-father and mother (whether it was because of Marco's 'deprogramming'
effort or because of his own realization of his parents' evil was
left unclear); he then donned his own Congressional Medal of Honor
around his neck, and spoke to a stunned Marco who had just arrived
("You couldn't have stopped them, the Army couldn't have stopped
them. So I had to"); he turned his rifle on himself and suicidally
blew his brains out - Marco witnessed the blast (offscreen)
- the dissolve from the gunshot blast to crackling
lightning/thunder claps at film's end - an epilogue, when Marco looked
out a rain-spattered window, and then read from a History of the
US Army book filled with citations for other heroic Congressional
Medal of Honor winners, including his own posthumous citation of
bravery for Shaw's sacrifice in stopping the Iselins; Marco pondered
on the meaning of Shaw's life/death: ("Made to commit acts too
unspeakable to be cited here by an enemy who had captured his mind
and his soul. He freed himself at last and in the end heroically
and unhesitatingly gave his life to save his country. Raymond Shaw.
Hell! Hell!")
|
Major Marco's Nightmares
Brainwashing Sequence
Televised Press Conference - Mrs. Iselin Watching Husband
on Monitor
Blood Splatter on Stalin Poster
Shaw's Train Conversation with Rosie
Heinz 57 Ketchup Varieties Transition
Marco's Karate-Fight Confrontation with Chunjin
(Henry Silva)
Raymond
("Go jump in the lake")
Assassination of Senator Jordan
Marco's Attempt to De-Program Shaw
Climactic Scene at Political Rally
Marco's Epilogue
|