Cinema
The Manchurian Candidate
John Frankenheimer · 1962
Synopsis
During the Korean War, an American patrol is captured and taken to Manchuria. Three days later, Sergeant Raymond Shaw and Captain Bennett Marco return to the lines; on Marco's recommendation, Shaw receives the Medal of Honor for having saved his men, and all of them, questioned about him, answer with the same laudatory sentence, although the troop detested this cold loner. Now a major in military intelligence, Marco has a recurring nightmare: a meeting of the ladies of a gardening club, in a hotel in New Jersey, where hydrangeas are being discussed.
Context
The film was released on 24 October 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Withdrawn from cinemas about a year later, it still aired on television in 1965 and 1974, but was not rereleased in cinemas until 1988, after a screening at the New York festival. A legend attributed this withdrawal to Kennedy's assassination; Frankenheimer and the screenwriter George Axelrod denied it in 1988, and the rights, which reverted to Frank Sinatra in 1972 when the contract with United Artists expired, had remained unexploited.
Who it is for
A film of two hours six minutes, in black and white; the dream sequence contains a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree pan.
Prizes and reception
Two Oscar nominations, including Angela Lansbury for supporting actress, a Golden Globe for her, and entered in 1994 in the National Film Registry.
Sources for this page 8
The pages consulted to check this page.