Editing John Frankenheimer (section)

===''The Manchurian Candidate'' (1962)===

Frankenheimer's 1962 political thriller [[The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)|''The Manchurian Candidate'']] is widely regarded as his most remarkable cinematic work.<ref>Nixon, 2006 TCM: “...Frankenheimer became a major cinematic force with The Manchurian Candidate…its power and influence have not been diminished.”<br>Barson, 2021 Britannica: “The Manchurian Candidate is arguably Frankenheimer's most-respected film.”<br>Walsh, 2002 WSWS: “The Manchurian Candidate is a peculiar film, perhaps Frankenheimer's most important, but certainly not entirely coherent or convincing.”</ref> Biographer Gerald Prately observes that “the impact of this film was enormous. With it, John Frankenheimer became a force to be reckoned with in contemporary cinema; it established him as the most artistic, realistic and vital filmmaker at work in America or elsewhere.”<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 82 And p. 224: Frankenheimer: “...the film that people say is my best, ''The Manchurian Candidate''...”<br>Bowie, 2006: “The Manchurian Candidate (1962)...is an achievement so elephantine that it tends to dwarf the others in critical assessments of its director's work.”</ref>

Frankenheimer and producer [[George Axelrod]] bought [[Richard Condon]]'s 1959 novel after it had already been turned down by many Hollywood studios. After Frank Sinatra committed to the film, they secured backing from United Artists.<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 97: See Frankenheimer autobiographical remarks in Pratley.</ref> The plot centers on [[Korean War]] veteran Raymond Shaw, part of a prominent political family. Shaw is [[Brainwashing|brainwashed]] by Chinese and Russian captors after his Army platoon are imprisoned. He returns to civilian life in the United States, where he becomes an unwitting “[[Sleeper agent|sleeper]]” assassin in an international communist conspiracy to subvert and overthrow the U.S. government.<ref>Barson, 2021 Britannica: “A chilling adaption of the Richard Condon novel, it starred Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey as American soldiers who are brainwashed during the Korean War in a scheme to have a communist elected U.S. president.”<br>Walsh, 2002 WSWS: brief film summary<br>Pratley, 1969 p. 81-82: See Synopsis</ref>

The film co-starred [[Laurence Harvey]] (as Sergeant Raymond Shaw), [[Janet Leigh]], [[James Gregory (actor)|James Gregory]] and [[John McGiver]]. [[Angela Lansbury]], as the mother and controller to her “sleeper” assassin son, garnered an Academy Award nomination for a “riveting” performance” in “the greatest screen role of her career.”<ref>Baxter, 2002: “greatest screen role…”<br>Nixon, 2006 TCM: “Angela Lansbury's Oscar-nominated performance is usually what is remembered most about the film.”<br>Barson, 2021. Britannica:  “Angela Lansbury, who was nominated for best supporting actress.”<br>Walsh, 2004 WSWS: “Angela Lansbury is riveting as the sleeper assassin's mother...”<br>Pratley, 1969 p. 85: “Angela Lansbury is carried over from All Fall Down (1962), again a splendidly possessive mother…”</ref> [[Frank Sinatra]], as Major Bennett Marco, who reverses Shaw's mind control mechanisms and exposes the conspiracy, delivers perhaps his most satisfactory film performance.<ref>Nixon, 2006 TCM: “...a creative atmosphere that allowed Frank Sinatra to give what many feel is his best performance.”<br>Pratley, 1969 p. 87: “...both Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey give superlative, restrained performances…”</ref>
Frankenheimer declared that both technically and conceptually, he had “complete control” over the production.<ref>Prately, 1969 p. 97: Frankenheimer: “The Manchurian Candidate is the first film I really instigated and had complete control...” And p. 98: “...I had complete control…” over the production.</ref>

The technical “fluency” exhibited in ''The Manchurian Candidate'' reveals Frankenheimer's struggle to convey this [[Cold War]] narrative. Film historian [[Andrew Sarris]] remarked that the director was “obviously sweating over his technique...instead of building sequences, Frankenheimer explodes them prematurely, preventing his films from coming together coherently.”<ref>Walsh, 2002 WSWS: Sarris quoted by Walsh.</ref> ''The Manchurian Candidate'', nonetheless, conveys the “paranoia and delirium of the Cold War years”<ref>Bowie, 2006: “...documentary-styled ''mise en scène''...”<br>Walsh, 2002 WSWS: “...paranoia and delirium...”<br>Baxter, 2002: The Manchurian Candidate “is dominated by Frankenheimer's technical fluency…”</ref> through its documentary-style [[mise-en-scène]]. A demonstration of Frankenheimer's bravura direction and “visual inventiveness” appears in the notable brainwashing sequence, presenting the sinister proceedings from the perspective of both the perpetrator and victim.<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 85-87: Frankenheimer's “continual visual inventiveness”</ref><ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 85-87: “...the script contains no directions for the filming of the masterly ‘brainwashing’, an extremely complicated piece of filming which he devised.”And p. 87: More on shot sequence.</ref> The complexity of the sequence and its antecedents in television are described by film critic Stephen Bowie:

{{blockquote|“The famous brainwashing sequence in which Frankenheimer moves seamlessly between an objective perspective (captured soldiers in a communist seminar) and a subjective one (the soldiers attending an innocuous meeting of the Ladies’ Garden Society). This ''tour de force'' was a pure distillation of Frankenheimer's television technique, opening with a self-conscious 360-degree pan that utilised the ‘wild’ sets which allowed TV cameras to move into seemingly impossible positions.”<ref>Bowie, 2006:</ref>}}
 
In 1968, Frankenheimer acknowledged that the methods he used on television were “the same kind of style I used on ''The Manchurian Candidate''. It was the first time I had the assurance and self-confidence to go back to what I had been really good at in television.”<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 98:</ref> Compositionally, Frankenheimer concentrates his actors into “long lens” menage, in which dramatic interactions occur at close-up, mid-shot and long-shot, a configuration that he repeated “obsessively.” Film critic Stepen Bowie observes that “this style meant that Frankenheimer's early output became a cinema of exactitude rather than spontaneity.”<ref>Bowie, 2002</ref>
{{quote box|width=30em|bgcolor=cornsilk|fontsize=100%|salign=center|quote=“More and more I think that our society is being manipulated and controlled...the most important aspect is that [in 1962] this country was just recovering from the [[Red Scare|McCarthy]] era and nothing had ever been filmed about it. I wanted to do a picture that showed how ludicrous the whole [[McCarthyism|McCarthy]] far-Right syndrome was and how dangerous the [[Communism|far-Left]] syndrome is...''The Manchurian Candidate'' dealt with the McCarthy era, the whole idea of fanaticism, the far-Right and the far-Left being really the same thing, and the idiocy of it. I wanted to show that and I think we did.”- John Frankenheimer in Gerald Pratley's ''The Cinema of John Frankenheimer'' (1969)<ref>Prately, 1969 p. 100-101</ref>}}

''The Manchurian Candidate'' was released in the post-[[Red Scare]] period of the early 1960s, when anti-Communist political ideology still prevailed.<ref>Nixon, 2006 TCM: “The nation's shameful anti-Communist era was essentially over, but its effects lingered, and the idea of presenting a McCarthy-type movement as a sinister Communist plot was outrageous.”</ref> Just one month after the film's release, the [[John F. Kennedy]] administration was in the midst of [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] and nuclear [[Brinksmanship|brinkmanship]] with the Soviet Union.<ref>Walsh, 2004 WSWS: “Frankenheimer's ''The Manchurian Candidate'' appeared in cinemas in the US at an extraordinary moment, October 24, 1962, in the middle of the ‘Fourteen Days’ of the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 15–28), when the Cold War came as close as it ever did to becoming a nuclear catastrophe.”<br>Nixon, 2006 TCM: “...both Frankenheimer and Sinatra were close friends of the Kennedy family...”<br>Pratley, 1969 p. 81: Pratley reports that the film was released on 27 September 1962.</ref>

That Frankenheimer and screenwriter Axelrod persisted in the production is a measure of their political liberalism, in a historical period when, according to biographer Gerald Pratley “ it was clearly dangerous to speak of politics in the out-spoken, satiric vein that characterized this picture.”<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 82<br>Walsh, 2002 WSWS: “one assumes Frankenheimer and Axelrod are making the ultimate liberal statement about ‘extremism.’”</ref> Film critic David Walsh adds that “the level of conviction and urgency” that informs ''The Manchurian Candidate'', reflects “the relative confidence and optimism American liberals felt in the early 1960s.”<ref>Walsh, 2004 WSWS</ref>
Frankenheimer's “terrifying parable” of the American political milieu was sufficiently well-received to avoid its summary rejection by distributors.<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 84: “The Manchurian Candidate provoked its share of rage and anguish...but the film was too great an achievement, both in artistic and commercial terms, to go down before it.”<br>Nixon, 2006 TCM: “...a volatile and terrifying parable of American political life.”<br>Baxter, 2002: “Box office receipts...were modest...the film went from ‘failure to cult classic without even being a success’”</ref>

''The Manchurian Candidate'', due its subject matter and its proximity to the [[Assassination of John F. Kennedy|Kennedy assassination]] is inextricably linked to that event.<ref>Bowie, 2006: “It occupies a place in the popular memory as an eerie prediction of the Kennedy assassination a year later...”</ref> Frankenheimer acknowledged as much when, in 1968, he described ''The Manchurian Candidate'' as “a horribly prophetic film. It's frightening what's happened in our country since that film was made.”<ref name="Pratley, 1969 p. 98">Pratley, 1969 p. 98</ref>

After completing ''The Manchurian Candidate'', Frankenheimer recalls that he was determined to continue filmmaking: “I wanted to initiate the project, I wanted to have full control, I never wanted to go back to be hired as a director again.”<ref>Pratley, p. 108: Frankenheimer, quoted in Pratley</ref> He was offered a contract to direct a biopic about French singer [[Edith Piaf]], with [[Natalie Wood]] in the starring role. He emphatically rejected the offer when he learned that Piaf's songs would be sung in English, rather than in the original French.<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 109: Frankenheimer comments on this topic.</ref>

In 1963, Frankenheimer and screenwriter George Axelrod were introduced to the producer [[Edward Lewis (producer)|Edward Lewis]], considering a TV production concerning the [[American Civil Liberties Union]]. When the project was deemed too expensive for television, Frankenheimer was approached by an associate of Lewis, actor and producer [[Kirk Douglas]], to purchase and adapt to film the novel ''Seven Days in May'' by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II.<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 103, p. 110-111<br>Safford, 2007 TCM: The literary property was “purchased for the screen through the joint efforts of Frankenheimer and Kirk Douglas, who agreed to produce and star in the film...”</ref>