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The Manchurian Candidate
Near the end of the Korean War, a platoon of U.S. soldiers is captured by communists and brainwashed. Following the war, the platoon is returned home, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw is lauded as a hero by the rest of his platoon. However, the platoon commander, Captain Bennett Marco, finds himself plagued by strange nightmares and soon races to uncover a terrible plot.
1962 · Directed by John Frankenheimer · 126 min · Thriller · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 17 frames
Tagline
When you've seen it all, you'll swear there's never been anything like it!
Plot
During the Korean War, Soviet and Chinese soldiers capture a U.S. Army platoon, taking them to communist China. Three days later, Sergeant Raymond Shaw and Captain Bennett "Ben" Marco return to UN lines. Upon Marco's recommendation, Shaw is awarded the Medal of Honor for saving his soldiers' lives in combat, though two men were killed. Shaw returns to the United States, where his mother, Eleanor Iselin, exploits his heroism to further the political career of her husband, Senator John Iselin. When asked to describe Shaw, two soldiers in his unit uniformly respond that "he is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being [they] have ever known." In actuality, Shaw is a strict, cold, unsympathetic loner hated by his men.
After Marco is promoted to major and assigned to Army Intelligence, he has a recurring nightmare: a hypnotized Shaw blithely murders two soldiers from his platoon before an assembly of communist military leaders to demonstrate their revolutionary brainwashing technique.
Unbeknownst to him, during captivity, Shaw was programmed as a sleeper agent, who obeys orders to kill and immediately forgets having done so. His heroism is a false memory implanted during the brainwashing. Agents trigger Shaw by suggesting he play solitaire; the queen of diamonds activates him. Meanwhile, Eleanor is masterminding John's political ascent with his baseless claims that communists work at the Defense Department (a clear parallel to the demagogic activities of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in the early 1950s). To spite his mother and stepfather, Shaw takes a job at a newspaper published by Holborn Gaines, Iselin's harshest critic. Communist agents later have Shaw murder Gaines to confirm that his brainwashing still works.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: George Axelrod
- Cinematography: Lionel Lindon
- Edited by: Ferris Webster
- Music: David Amram
- Production design: Richard Sylbert
- Produced by: George Axelrod, John Frankenheimer
Cast
- Frank Sinatra as Capt./Maj. Bennett Marco
- Laurence Harvey as Raymond Shaw
- Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Iselin
- Janet Leigh as Eugenie Rose Chaney
- James Gregory as Sen. John Yerkes Iselin
- Henry Silva as Chunjin
- Leslie Parrish as Jocelyn Jordan
- John McGiver as Sen. Thomas Jordan
- Khigh Dhiegh as Dr. Yen Lo
- James Edwards as Cpl. Allen Melvin
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: MC Productions, United Artists
- Budget: $2,200,000
- Box office: $7,700,000
- Themes: cold war, korean war (1950-53), stepparents, conspiracy, brainwashed assassin, brainwashing, black and white, election, presidential candidate, sleeper agent
More by John Frankenheimer
On this film
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