Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) and Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) need to clear their heads in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (John Frankenheimer, 1962)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Friday, July 15, and Saturday, July 16
Series runs July 15 – August 3
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
BAMcinématek is celebrating the craziness about to take place at this month’s Republican and Democratic National Conventions with the three-week series “Four More Years: An Election Special,” consisting of twenty fiction and nonfiction films (although it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference) set in the lunatic world that is American politics. The festival kicks off July 15-16 with one of the greatest political thrillers ever made, John Frankenheimer’s unconventional Cold War conspiracy noir, The Manchurian Candidate. Ten years after fighting in Korea, Maj. Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) remains in the military, working in intelligence. He is haunted by terrifying nightmares in which his unit, led by Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), is at a woman’s gardening club lecture that turns into a Communist brainwashing session orchestrated by the menacing Dr. Yen Lo (Khigh Dheigh) of the Pavlov Institute. Meanwhile, the decorated but clearly tortured Shaw has to deal with his power-hungry mother, Mrs. Iselin (Angela Lansbury), who is manipulating everyone she can to ensure that her second husband, the McCarthy-like Sen. John Yerkes Iselin (James Gregory), becomes the Republican vice presidential nominee. As Marco gets to the bottom of the mystery, the clock keeps ticking toward an inevitable crisis with lives on the line and the very future of democracy at stake.
Maj. Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) and Eugenie Rose Cheyney (Janet Leigh) have a rough go of it in John Frankenheimer’s Cold War cult classic
Written by George Axelrod based on the book by Richard Condon (Winter Kills, Prizzi’s Honor), The Manchurian Candidate is a tense, gripping work that feels oddly prescient when seen today. Frankenheimer (Birdman of Alcatraz, Seven Days in May, Seconds) keeps the suspense at Hitchockian levels, particularly as the finale nears, while throwing in doses of dark satire and complex romance. Shaw tries to reconnect with his lost love, Jocelyn Jordan (Leslie Parrish), daughter of erudite Democratic Sen. Thomas Jordan (John McGiver), while Marco is intrigued by Eugenie Rose Cheyney (Janet Leigh); their meeting scene in between cars on a train is an offbeat joy, thought to be impacted by Leigh’s real-life breakup with Tony Curtis that very day. Sinatra, whose previous films included From Here to Eternity and Suddenly — he played a presidential assassin in the latter — once again gets to show off his strong acting chops, especially in a long, uncut scene with Harvey (Room at the Top, Darling) and a fierce fight with Harvey’s servant, Chunjin (Ocean Eleven’s Henry Silva). Oscar nominee Lansbury relishes her role as Shaw’s villainous mother (in reality, she was only three years older than he was), manipulating her blowhard husband like a puppet. The dramatic music is by composer David Amram (Pull My Daisy), the moody cinematography by Lionel Lindon (All Fall Down, I Want to Live!), with narration by Paul Frees, who went on to voice such cartoon characters as Burgermeister Meisterburger in Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town and Santa Claus in Frosty the Snowman, in addition to many others. Among the New York City landmarks featured in the film are Central Park and the old Madison Square Garden. And you’ll never look at the Queen of Diamonds or play solitaire quite the same way again. The film’s cultlike status was enhanced because it was out of circulation for a quarter of a century until Sinatra, claiming he hadn’t known that he had owned the the rights since 1972, rereleased it in 1988. “Four More Years: An Election Special” continues through August 3 with such other gems as Franklin J. Schaffner’s The Best Man, Hal Ashby’s Shampoo, Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool, and Frank Capra’s State of the Union.