The Manchurian Candidate

Year of Release: 1962

Director:  John Frankenheimer

Screenplay:  George Axelrod, based on the novel The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon

Starring:  Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, James Gregory

Running Time:  126 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Harvey) returns from the Korean War with the Medal of Honor and finds himself hailed as a hero, a position which his ruthless mother (Lansbury) and stepfather (Gregory), an ambitious politician, proceed to take full advantage of.  However Shaw and other members of his former platoon, including Captain Bennett Marco (Sinatra), suffer the same recurring nightmare.  Marco becomes convinced that something happened to them in Korea, and his investigation proceeds to uncover a disturbing conspiracy.

This is one of the classic Cold War thrillers.  Despite being made 60 years ago, and being very much a product of it's time, this still feels relevant today, with the central premise of a hostile power influencing democracy is disturbingly prescient, particularly when the chosen candidate is a populist rightwing fool.  Laurence Harvey turns in a great performance as the tormented, brainwashed Raymond Shaw, and Frank Sinatra, who really was a great actor, is fantastic as the haunted Captain Marco.  Janet Leigh doesn't really have anything to do, in her few scenes as Sinatra's love interest, but Angela Lansbury turns in a terrifying performance as the utterly ruthless Eleanor Iselin, who will do anything to gain political power, and seems to have a very unhealthy relationship with her son (which apparently was toned down from the book).  Directed by John Frankenheimer, the film uses skewed camera angles, reflective of Shaw's distorted frame of mind.  The brainwashing itself is played out in almost surrealistic dream sequences. While it drags in places, this still holds up as a disturbing, paranoid thriller, and for a big studio film from 1962, it does get quite surprisingly dark.  The film was remade in 2004, directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Denzel Washington.      

Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian candidate

Cold War

Year of Release:  2018
Director:  Pawel Pawlikowski
Screenplay: Pawel Pawlikowski, Janusz Glowacki and Piotr Borkowski
Starring:  Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza, Cedric Kahn, Jeanne Balibar
Running Time:  85 minutes
Genre:  Romance, drama

Poland, 1949:  Musical director Wiktor (Kot) meets aspiring singer Zula (Kulig) and the two fall madly, obsessively in love.  The film charts their tumultuous personal and professional lives against the backdrop of the turmoil of post-war Europe, as they move back and forth from Poland, to Yugoslavia, to East Germany, to France.

Crisply photographed in luminous black-and-white this is a stunningly beautiful film.  It also features a fantastic soundtrack mixing traditional Polish folk songs, jazz, classical, and fifties pop music.  However there is very little chemistry between the two pretty unlikeable leads, and while there is supposed to be white-hot passion between them, they don't even really seem to like each other very much.  The narrative is very fragmented, it takes place in a lot of locations over a very long period of time.  Wiktor and Zula both get together and split up with a number of different people, none of whom really make an impression, which becomes quite confusing, for example in one scene it is mentioned briefly that Zula has a  child who is never even referenced afterwards.  It's one of those romances where none of the characters make an impact aside from the central pair.  The film does reference the political situation in Europe at the time, but it helps if you already have some knowledge of it, because the film doesn't explain much.

It is worth watching because it is a very beautiful film, and the ending packs a real emotional punch.  I'm glad that I saw it, but I wouldn't really say that I enjoyed it, and I'm not in any hurry to see it again.

Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot in Cold War