The Manchurian Candidate

Election Day! I don't know about you, but I thought I'd be happy when the big day had come and gone! Well, November 3rd came and went, and we still don't have a definite answer of who our next president will be. 

I can't say I'm a political junkie, but if you're caught up in the season and really enjoy all things politics, you'll probably like the movie The Manchurian Candidate. I'm referring to the 1962 version. I rented it years ago and found it absorbing and quite fascinating. Like Citizen Kane, it's one you have to watch from the beginning and pay close attention. Filmsite Movie Review says: 

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) is director-producer John Frankenheimer's prophetically tragic, chilling, brilliant, blackish (film-noirish) Cold War thriller about brain-washing, conspiracy, the dangers of international Communism, McCarthyism, assassination, and political intrigue. Laurence Harvey is brilliant as a brainwashed Korean war hero who has been programmed as a Soviet sleeper/mole agent to assassinate a Presidential candidate. It can be categorized within many film genres - it functions as a horror film, a war film, a science fiction film, a black comedy, a suspense-thriller, and a political melodrama (with additional segments of romance and action).

The mood of this pseudo-documentary, satirical film masterpiece (from prolific veteran television director Frankenheimer) is paranoic, surrealistic, dark, macabre, cynical, and foreboding - these elements are combined in a traditional, top-notch suspenseful thriller framework with a nail-biting, Alfred Hitchcock-like climax. The movie displays the emerging role and importance of television in broadcasting public affairs and shaping opinion, and the circus atmosphere that surrounds American politics.

Read the complete review here. This film is considered by many critics to be one of the best movies ever made. Have you ever seen it?

Thanks for visiting and have a great week!