Tagline: When you’ve seen it all, you’ll swear there’s never been anything like it!
The Manchurian Candidate movie storyline. Based on Richard Condon’s novel, and adapted by George Axelrod. A complex, realistic depiction of brainwashing in a frightening, satirical psychological thriller. An American platoon fighting in the Korean War is captured and brainwashed by Communist North Koreans in Manchuria. Upon their return to the US, one of the veterans Major Bennett Marco (Sinatra) is haunted by recurring nightmares about their frightening incarceration.
He slowly realizes that fellow hero and Congressional Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), controlled and manipulated by his spy-agent “Queen of Diamonds” ambitious mother (Angela Lansbury) (the wife of right-wing, McCarthyite demagogue Senator John Iselin (David Gregory)), is behind the sinister plot to assassinate political enemies. The mind-controlled operative Shaw murders his own wife Jocie and his father-in-law, liberal Senator Thomas Jordon (McGiver). In the tense climax, Marco uncovers the programmed killer’s fiendish plans to assassinate the presidential nominee.
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American Cold War suspense thriller film directed and produced by John Frankenheimer and written by George Axelrod, based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate. Filmed in black and white with noirsh[citation needed] overtones, it stars Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh, with Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, and James Gregory in supporting roles. The plot centers on the Korean War brainwashing of Raymond Shaw, the son of a prominent political family, who becomes an unwitting assassin of an international communist conspiracy. Officials from China and the Soviet Union employ Shaw as a sleeper agent in an attempt to take over the U.S. government.
The film was released in the United States on October 24, 1962, at the height of U.S.-Soviet hostility during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was well-received by critics and was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress (Lansbury) and Best Editing. It was seen by far fewer people at the time than other classic films released that year such as Lawrence of Arabia, Lolita and The Miracle Worker,[citation needed] but was selected in 1994 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Directed by: John Frankenheimer
Starring: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, James Gregory, John McGiver, Khigh Dhiegh, James Edwards, Douglas Henderson, Albert Paulsen, Barry Kelley
Screenplay by: George Axelrod
Production Design by: Richard Sylbert
Cinematography by: Lionel Lindon
Film Editing by: Ferris Webster
Costume Design by: Moss Mabry
Set Decoration by: George R. Nelson
Art Direction by: Philip M. Jefferies
Music by: David Amram
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: October 24, 1962
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