Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film is the 1962 Cold War thriller "The Manchurian Candidate."

It stars Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey, Janet Leigh, and Angela Lansbury.

The film was directed by John Frankenheimer, who also gave us such classic films as "Birdman of Alcatraz" in 1962, "Seven Days in May" in 1964, and "Black Sunday" in 1977.

The film concerns Major Bennett Marco, an intelligence officer in the United States Army who served as a captain during the Korean War.

He was the leader of a squad attacked during a patrol, but most of his men returned safely and one, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, was awarded the Medal of Honor on Marco's recommendation.

But Marco has been plagued by a recurring nightmare about Shaw and the other members of his squad and what happened to them in Korea.

Marco is placed on indefinite sick leave and visits Shaw in New York where he works for an influential political columnist.

One of the columnist's primary targets is Shaw's stepfather, Senator Iselin, a red baiting ignoramus married to Shaw's domineering mother, Eleanor.

When Marco learns that another member of his squad has the same recurring nightmare about Shaw, he is determined to find out the truth about what happened to them all in Korea and why.

"The Manchurian Candidate" is both a political and a psychological thriller.

It is steeped in the issues, factions, and fears of the Cold War, but also in the post-war interest in psychology and probing the unconscious motivations and preoccupations of the human mind.

Psychotherapy and the analytic methods of Sigmund Freud became popular both as a way for individuals to improve their mental health and as a means of explaining cultural or social attitudes and behaviors.

Psychological terms such as repression, projection, and neurosis became and remain a part of everyday language, while Freudian theories such as the Oedipus complex and the so-called Freudian slip became so well known that they provided fodder both for comedians and for motion pictures, notably, Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic thriller "Psycho."

Hypnosis was often used as a therapeutic technique, but was also popularly believed to be a means for one person to exert mental control over another.

This idea had its roots in some of the earliest demonstrations of what was then called mesmerism.

It was popularized in movies such as 1931's "Svengali," based on the 1894 novel, "Trilby," in which John Barrymore used hypnosis and mind control to make a singer out of his tone deaf protege.

Another popular idea about mind control by one person over another was brainwashing, which was used to explain the forcible indoctrination of nonconformists in totalitarian societies.

In George Orwell's 1948 novel, "1984," for example, Winston Smith is subjected to imprisonment, isolation, and torture until he accepts the leadership of Big Brother.

The English term brainwashing first appeared in 1950 to explain why some American prisoners of war in Korea cooperated with their Chinese captors or even defected to join them.

Brainwashing was presented as evidence for the perfidious nature of the Chinese communists in particular, playing into century old stereotypes about people of East Asia.

This idea of brainwashing, as well as the cultural paranoia that characterized much of the Cold War in the United States in the 1950s, provided the central conflict in Richard Condon's 1959 novel "The Manchurian Candidate."

The novel was faithfully adapted in the screenplay co-written by George Axelrod and John Frankenheimer for the 1962 movie, which includes some subtle satire and surprising wit in counterpoint to the pervading sense of tension.

Shot on a low budget, it features some truly arresting uses of cinematography and editing to create a story where nothing is exactly what it seems to be and the actions of a few men and women might destroy or save American democracy.

Despite the importance of the story to the impact of "The Manchurian Candidate," the screenplay actually included little in the way of camera directions.

This may have been because the director, John Frankenheimer, was an uncredited co-writer with George Axelrod and already had some idea of how he was going to shoot the film.

The intercutting of television images and reality during the press conference and convention scenes, and the contrast between Shaw's methodical preparation for the assassination and Marco's frantic race to stop him were all Frankenheimer's work.

One scene where Marco shows Shaw the deck of cards entirely made up of the queen of diamonds is slightly out of focus as if to suggest Shaw's unbAllanced mental state.

In reality, Frankenheimer confessed, that shot was just the best one for Sinatra and so was used in the film.

[host chuckling] The most impressive scene in "The Manchurian Candidate" is without doubt the Flower Lecture that recreates the brainwashing process that causes the recurring nightmare suffered by Marco and his fellow soldier, Allan Melvin.

The sequence was filmed three times its entirety with three different casts, with three different sets constructed so the camera could turn completely around in each.

The parts were then edited together to create a hallucinatory intermixing of the three different perspectives of the same scene.

Marco's white lady's version of the Flower Lecture, Private Melvin's Black lady's version of the lecture and the real version showing the outcome of the brainwashing process.

Once the second character perspective is introduced, it is very clear to the audience how the scene is supposed to be understood.

The need to create a contrast between Marco's version of the Flower Lecture and Corporal Melvin's version led to the casting of an African American actor, James Edwards, as Allan Melvin.

Edwards appeared in a number of war stories in films and television beginning in 1949 until his death in 1970.

The name of his character, oddly enough, is taken from the name of a well-known character and voice actor.

That Allan Melvin originated the voices of "Magilla Gorilla," Drooper in "The Banana Splits," and "H. R.

Pufnstuf."

His first major role was his corporal Steve Henshaw, a crony of Master Sergeant Ernie Bilko on "The Phil Silver Show."

In fact, Marco's Korean War squad in "The Manchurian Candidates" includes five characters with names of people associated with that show, Allan Melvin and the surnames of actors, Harvey Lembeck, Maurice Grossfield, actually Gosfield, and Phil Silvers, as well as series creator Nat Hiken.

Why?

I have no idea.

Angela Lansbury was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Sergeant Shaw's mother, Eleanor Shaw Iselin.

She is clearly the dominant member of her family and both her milk toast husband had her son submit to her will.

In the novel, Eleanor had been sexually abused by her father and has an incestuous relationship with her son Raymond.

In the film, that aspect of the story has been toned down to a series of kisses Eleanor gives Raymond as she prepares him for the assassination, culminating in a less than motherly kiss on the mouth.

To appease the censors, John Frankenheimer asked Angela Lansbury to cover their mouths with her hand during the kiss but the implication was still clear.

Janet Leigh's character, Eugenie Rose Chaney, the woman who falls so hard for Bennett Marco is something of a mystery in the film.

She and Marco meet on a train and despite his obviously distracted state of mind, she engages in sexually charged repartee with him before pointedly giving him her New York address and telephone number.

Although this sort of encounter might be every man's fantasy and perhaps Frank Sinatra's reality, in the context of the film, the audience might rightfully wonder if Rose, who comes on like a femme fatale, is some sort of secret agent, and if so, which side she is working for.

But as the film continues, Rose is just Marco's romantic partner and moral support, and apparently nothing more.

Still, between the mysteriously supportive Rose Chaney, the sinister and domineering Eleanor Iselin and the hapless doomed Joce Jordan, "The Manchurian Candidate," like Raymond Shaw, obviously has a fraught relationship with women.

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.

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