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BFI Filmstore  >   Books & Magazines >  BFI Classics  > Manchurian Candidate, The: BFI Film Classics
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Manchurian Candidate, The: BFI Film Classics

30-Jun-02
80 pages
Published/distributed by BFI Publishing
ISBN/EAN: 9780851709314
Paperback
Price: £9.99
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Manchurian Candidate, The: BFI Film Classics 
Marcus, Griel
'It may be the most sophisticated political thriller ever made in Hollywood,' Pauline Kael wrote of The Manchurian Candidate, John Frankenheimer's terrifying 1962 political thriller about an American serviceman brainwashed in Korea and made into an assassin. Sophisticated to be sure, it's also a headlong fall through the looking-glass of American politics and the most deeply prophetic film of the second half of the American century. Funny, outrageous and cruel, The Manchurian Candidate raises the stakes again and again, promising a cool night of suspense but delivering a nightmare that leaves audiences speechless to this day.

There are unforgettable performances in The Manchurian Candidate from Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury as an incarnation of murderous perversity. But Frank Sinatra is at the heart of the film, horrified then devastated by what he has to see until, finally, for Greil Marcus, he's 'a man almost dead with sorrow and guilt'. As Marcus reconstructs the drama, this is a movie in which the director and actors were suddenly capable of anything, beyond any expectations. He shows how The Manchurian Candidate has burrowed deeply into American culture, becoming at once an ineradicable piece of folklore and a mystery yet to be solved.
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