John Frankenheimer

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

André Crous

USA
4*

Director:
John Frankenheimer
Screenwriter:
George Axelrod
Director of Photography:
Lionel Lindon

Running time: 126 minutes

The Manchurian Candidate leaves the viewer with a lasting impression of conspiracy and treason at the highest levels of government, and is filled with magnificent set pieces, from the brilliantly staged nightmare sequences that frighten us because horrific acts are perpetrated with poker-face serenity and a willingness to carry out the orders given, to the film’s thrilling climax at a political party’s National Convention.

In light of the film’s premise, that evil forces are at work and will stop at nothing to infiltrate the government and take over the country on a wave of anti-communist nationalism, the film slowly picks up speed before charging towards its suspenseful resolution. These final moments are enormously rewarding, for despite having received confirmation of all the characters’ intentions and desires, we are still left with lingering doubts about the plot, which soon clear up once the tension reaches breaking point.

The film is about brainwashing and about communism; however, in a reversal of the usual approach, the former is treated very seriously while the latter is used for the sake of humour, though it has some darker implications. In 1952, a soldier and his platoon are captured in Korea, but on their arrival back in the United States, some time later, this soldier, Raymond Shaw, is awarded the Medal of Honor for having saved the lives of his fellow soldiers, who – each and every one of them – describe him as “the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

Shaw is the stepson of Senator Joseph Iselin, a buffoon who is about to be re-elected, the campaign run by his devious, ambitious wife – Shaw’s mother, Eleanor (Angela Lansbury). Shaw clearly has some mother issues, but these will only come into focus in the second half of the film. For the time being, we are treated to Shaw’s former captain, Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), who struggles with the same hellish nightmare over and over every night, in which he sees the decorated Shaw forced to murder two soldiers of the platoon – the exact same soldiers who were supposed to have “died” in Korea.

It is revealed that Shaw has been brainwashed to respond to certain cues – phrases or images – that make him susceptible to suggestion, and these are directly linked to his relationship with his mother, a diabolical woman who will stop at nothing to quench her lust for power and her unspoken lust for her own son. In case you were wondering: yes, Freud is mentioned explicitly, though not within the context of Raymond and Eleanor. In flashback, Raymond’s first love, Jocelyn, mentions Freud when she tells him of her father’s fear of snakes.

The film does have its handful of flaws, most important of which is the development of Janet Leigh’s character, Eugenie, who meets a tired Marco on the train, speaks to him in what seems like coded language, and proceeds to fall head over heels in love with him. Perhaps this part of the story was included to counterbalance the tragic relationship of Raymond and Jocelyn, but Eugenie brings very little to the plot and could have been ditched completely. The role of a Korean interpreter, Chunjin, who comes to America and takes a job as Raymond’s valet, is also left too vague, and by the end of the film we have no idea whether his intentions were pure or not.

As a cautionary tale, released around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War, shortly after the McCarthy years and one year before the assassination of JFK, the film was relevant to the point of being clairvoyant. It contains some unforgettable scenes, including a tense scene with the Star-Spangled Banner, though the music at other points in the film can be quite heavy-handed. The idea of a communist acting as a publicly anti-communist crusader is also still very relevant today, as can be seen in the American Congress, where quite a few closeted gay men are, in public, vehemently opposed to homosexuality. Today, watching Eleanor mention the kinds of emergency powers she intends to secure for her husband, saying that they would “make martial law seem like anarchy”, one immediately thinks of the Patriot Act, which just goes to show that politics change very little over time. It’s not entirely clear to what extent Senator Iselin is aware of his wife’s grand design, but the fact that he dresses up as Abraham Lincoln during a dinner party (and is reflected in a portrait of the president in another scene) provides interesting clues to his awareness of what everything is leading up to.

Frankenheimer, who would go on to direct another political thriller, Seven Days in May, slowly reveals the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and in the end, we do get the whole picture, but some pieces seem to belong to a different puzzle.

Seven Days in May (1964)

André Crous

USA
3.5*

Director:
John Frankenheimer
Screenwriter: 
Rod Serling
Director of Photography:
Ellsworth Fredericks

Running time: 118 minutes

John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May is a slow cooker, and even though it doesn’t punch you as hard as some other political films, most notably Frankenheimer’s own The Manchurian Candidate, released two years earlier, it is as eerily relevant today as it was during the Cold War.

It’s early May in Washington, D.C., and the temperature is rising fast. Outside the White House, protesters are lamenting the president’s decision to sign a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, which, they say, would put the United States at a disadvantage, and demonstrates the naiveté of their commander-in-chief, President Jordan Lyman. On their side is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a four-star general named James Mattoon Scott, who has nothing but contempt for the treaty and the Russian communists it seems to appease.

The story centres on the administration’s concerns with Scott and his secretive dealings at the highest levels of the government, including the construction of a secret base near El Paso. Thanks to a number of fortunate slips of the tongue in the company of one of Scott’s subordinates, General Casey, known simply as “Jiggs”, a plan to overthrow the government slowly comes to light, and it is the administration’s task to contain the imminent threat to their national security.

Two questions surface: How does one go about containing this threat, when this act of sedition (by one of the most public, vocally patriotic individuals in the government, no less) is almost unthinkable? And does General Scott, despite his plans being labelled as treason, actually have a point when he stands up to defend his country against what he deems to be enemies both foreign and domestic?

The first question is obviously the narrative thread of the film, while the second question relates to the film’s relevance to politics today. Does patriotism (or nationalism) ever trump democracy and its institutions? The populism of General Scott is made clear during an address to a stadium packed with like-minded individuals furious at the president’s insistence on peace with communist Russia. Scott declares that patriotism, loyalty and sentiment define the USA, but he fails to recognise the importance of the institution of democracy. He has a Messiah complex and pretends to speak for “the people”, but his judgement is clouded by arrogance and a refusal to compromise or to discuss. Referring to the era of uncertainty brought about by the Cold War, Lyman makes the following statement:

And from this, this desperation, we look for a champion in red, white and blue. Every now and then, a man on a white horse rides by, and we appoint him to be our personal god for the duration. For some men it was a Senator McCarthy, for others it was a General Walker, and now it’s a General Scott. 

Parallels with current politicians and presidential candidates are self-evident, although they make a point of using the Constitution to protect themselves, even though, more often than not, they confuse the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The film has many highlights, including our first view of General Scott – in close-up, from behind, so we can’t see his face during a committee hearing. When Jiggs watches television, to see General Scott speak in front of the big crowd, the tension built up by the crowd’s euphoric reaction (they keep chanting “We want Scott!”) is also very well depicted by means of quick-fire editing, both inside the frame on the television set, and between these images and Jiggs’s face. There are also two excellent scenes inside the White House: In the first, Jiggs tells the president of his suspicions; in another, the showdown between the president and General Scott, the atmosphere is electric.

But the film also has its faults. Boom and camera shadows are visible, some scenes seem a bit too contrived (the scenes at El Paso, both in the restaurant and at the base, and the extraordinary timing of a key piece of evidence in the final scene), and the film ends with a speech every bit as cheesy as President Thomas Whitmore’s victory speech in Independence Day.

The film was ahead of its time with its use of videophones (giving an accurate impression that the film was set a few years into the future), and it has some wonderful moments of sharp dialogue. The use of actor Martin Balsam, who had appeared as detective Arbogast in Hitchcock’s Psycho a few years earlier, is also very clever, and when he picks up the phone after a significant encounter, we know that he won’t make it back in one piece.

Seven Days in May is a serious look at the potential for betrayal in government ranks and is worth a look. Though it doesn’t have the dramatic power of The Manchurian Candidate nor the power of drama disguised as comedy, as in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the film provides an insightful glimpse of the fear that the Cold War not only had dire international, but also intranational, implications. And these fears have not disappeared with the fall of the Iron Curtain, for populism and the likelihood of a man or woman “on a white horse” are even more frightening as the years pass.