"Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."
Several characters
"It's not that Raymond Shaw is hard to like. He's impossible to like!"
Frank Sinatra
Most people today probably think of kindly Jessica Fletcher of TV's Murder She Wrote when they think of Angela Lansbury. They don't think of her as anything even remotely bordering on evil.
But her performance in John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate," which premiered on this day in 1962, was ranked No. 21 on the American Film Institute's list of the silver screen's greatest villains.
Lansbury could do evil characters, and Mrs. Iselin was clearly evil, brainwashing her son (Laurence Harvey) to be used as a pawn to further her husband's political ambitions. Well, they were her ambitions for him, and I gathered that no one ever refused Mrs. Iselin anything. At least, not for long and no more than once.
Manipulative might be a better word for Mrs. Iselin. But her son, Raymond Shaw, resisted, and that was the source of some problems.
He was an obvious choice to be the Manchurian candidate; with his psychological profile, he was perfect for the part of a brainwashed assassin trained to do the bidding of his American handler — Mrs. Iselin — in a Cold War suspense thriller that hit America's movie screens at the same time that a real–life suspense thriller — the Cuban Missile Crisis — was playing out on America's TV screens.
"The Manchurian Candidate" was about a complex international Communist conspiracy, but for Mrs. Iselin, it was all leading up to the assumption of the presidential nomination by her husband. How it was to be achieved, though, is one of those things a viewer must see for himself so I will avoid giving away any of the details of the story — the same goes for the way that Frank Sinatra's character helped Raymond cast off the shackles that bound him.
I will say, though, that, if like Janet Leigh (who played Sinatra's love interest), you come in in the middle, chances are good that you will miss something.
But even if you watch it from start to finish, you may end up like me. I had to watch "The Manchurian Candidate" several times before I finally got a full grasp of the story. Some movies are like that.
Brainwashing was a new concept in 1962 and it remains a misunderstood condition today. It was developed during the Korean War, which is when the events in this story began. There were so many timely elements in the story as well as elements that became timely in hindsight — the political assassinations (and attempts) in the last half–century, including the assassination of President Kennedy a little over a year after this movie's debut and the lingering suspicion that Kennedy's assassin was a real–life Manchurian candidate.
Indeed, in every high–profile attack on a famous person, the suggestion is made by someone at some point that the perpetrator was some kind of unsuspecting agent. That suggestion is more plausible in some cases than others, but it is an indication of the lasting influence of "The Manchurian Candidate."
Frankenheimer's brilliant direction managed to convey so much in a movie that really was ahead of its time. I've always felt one of the best examples of his distinctive style came early in the film when the men in Shaw's unit believed they were in a ladies' garden club meeting — but the attendees were actually Russian and Chinese brass.
It was a chilling movie that told a story that continues to be relevant today — perhaps even more relevant today than it was then.
Lansbury was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, but she lost to Patty Duke in "The Miracle Worker."
