The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate is a 1959 novel by Richard Condon. It has twice been made into movies of the same name; a celebrated 1962 film directed by John Frankenheimer, and a 2004 film directed by Jonathan Demme.

1962 film

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The premise of the 1962 film was that the Soviets in the 1950s had developed a technique based on "brainwashing" and akin to hypnosis, whereby a person could be snapped into and out of a trance, ordered to do things with full compliance, and have no memory of such actions afterwards. United States soldiers fighting in the Korean War were thus captured, taken to the People's Republic of China to be brainwashed, then covertly released back to the American forces. To cover their tracks, the Communists would implant false memories in the American soldiers' heads and provide a subconscious trigger whereby the soldier could be snapped into and out of hyponosis. Even after full reintegration with American society, they would have no knowledge of their having been brainwashed or the triggers which set them off.

The movie stars Frank Sinatra (as Major Bennet Marco) and Laurence Harvey (as Sergeant Raymond Shaw) army officers who are captured and brainwashed. Their squadron is made to believe Raymond Shaw saved their lives, for which he receives the Medal of Honor when they return to America. In fact, the Communists intended to use Raymond as a test sleeper agent abroad and, using the Queen of Diamonds as a subconscious trigger, compel him to commit heinous crimes, including murder. It is learned late in the movie that Raymond was, in fact, controlled by his mother (played by Angela Lansbury) who sought to advance the fortunes of her husband and Raymond's step-father, Joseph Iselin (played by James Gregory), a McCarthy-like senatorial demagogue who was running for President and believed to have been a caricature of Vice-President Richard Nixon.

After the war is over Marco begins to have a recurring nightmare in which Raymond kills two of his fellow Army mates. When he finds out that another Army member has been having the same dream, he sets out to uncover the mystery. Janet Leigh plays Bennet's love interest. The nature of her character has been heavily discussed, with a bizarre conversation on a train between her character viewed by some as implying that Leigh's character, Eugenie Rose Cheney, was actually working for the Communists to attempt to control Marco.

It won acclaim for its political themes and the exploration of the connection between the far left and far right in cold war America.

Sinatra, who owned the rights to the film, removed it from distribution after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Sinatra broke his hand filming a brutal fight scene in the movie.

The film is consistently in the top 100 on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films; was #67 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies, and #17 on its 100 Years, 100 Thrills; and has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

2004 film

The 2004 film stars Denzel Washington as Marco, Liev Schreiber as Shaw and Meryl Streep as Shaw's mother. While the plot still centers around a candidate brainwashed with the involvement of his mother and her own political aims, the mechanics of the story and the parties involved are quite different in cases.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The 2004 movie has Shaw himself as the vice-presidential candidate; and Marco, also brainwashed but not fully aware of it, as the assassin. The film attempts to adapt itself to the modern world by having the brainwashing conducted by Manchurian Global, a large multinational corporation and government contractor, with the aim of expanding corporate influence as well as government contracts for themselves. Instead of capture during the Korean War, and being brainwashed by communists, Marco and Shaw's unit is captured during the first Gulf War (Desert Storm), and brainwashed at a secret Manchurian Global facility.

Eugenie's incredibly friendly first meeting with Marco is retained almost verbatim, and made realistic when it is discovered that she is an FBI agent assigned to monitor him. It is Eugenie who then discovers Marco after the altered assassination (which kills Shaw, having just won the election, as opposed to the original where the assassination takes place just before a candidacy declaration). Unlike the original, where Shaw commits suicide after killing Iselin, the assassin (Marco) is subdued before he can do so.

After hospitalization and conditioning, Marco helps the feds locate the abandoned island facility where he and his unit were brainwashed. In the original version, the question of whether the Communists' brainwashing technology could be used again are never addressed, and they simply disappear from the story.

The motives behind the brainwashed assassination plot in the 2004 version are more straightforward than the collusive politics of the original version: a corporation desires increased influence over government, so brainwashes a candidate who can be made pliable to their wishes and who can eliminate opposition politicians without being traced to them.

Usage of the term

The term "Manchurian candidate," spawned by the book and later films, refers to an individual who has undergone brainwashing and / or mind control with the intent of creating a "sleeper" personality within that individual. A Manchurian candidate has no knowledge of the brainwashing he or she underwent. He or she will behave normally in all situations, until the sleeper is "awakened" by a particular word or phrase. When the candidate encounters this trigger, he or she will perform any action his or her controllers demand, like an assassination. Following the act, the candidate will have no knowledge or recollection of his or her actions, and will return to a normal state until awakened again.

See also

• Conspiracy thriller
• The Bourne Identity
• Seven Days in May