Most famously, Marco’s nightmare consists of a daringly long sequence in which the platoon are sitting in a ladies’ garden club that gradually morphs into a clinical demonstration of brainwashing before communist dignitaries. The Frankenheimer film, which opened during the Cuban missile crisis and shortly before the Kennedy assassination, made an indelible impact through its quasi-surrealist ambience and because it presented a fractured mirror image of the politics of its time. Meryl Streep as Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, with Dean Stockwell (right) The entire cunning plot is revealed to be in the service of his stepfather, vice-presidential candidate Senator John Iselin, a rabid right-winger (modelled on Joseph McCarthy), who is in turn guided by Raymond’s domineering mother. However, their commander, Colonel Marco, is haunted by a nightmare that they are victims of a brainwashing exercise by a communist conclave, creating in Shaw a puppet who can be commanded – by uncovering the queen of diamonds in a game of solitaire – to carry out a political assassination.
Richard Condon’s novel and the film that came soon after (scripted by George Axelrod and directed by John Frankenheimer) dealt with a platoon, lost in the Korean War, whose men eventually return home convinced that one of their number, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, is their saviour and hero.
#THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE MOVIE MOVIE#
In fact, Demme’s new The Manchurian Candidate is his most compelling movie since The Silence of the Lambs (1991), a dizzying reinvention of the original set in an era stretching from the first Gulf War to the present conflict in Iraq. Would Demme succeed in updating another 1960s classic, this time an apparently unbeatable, subversive take on the American political scene? The original pairing of the charm-laden Will Smith with Thandie Newton might have worked, but when the need for an immediate start to filming led to Mark Wahlberg being cast in the lead, by Demme’s own admission sparks failed to ignite. Clearly intended as a homage to the French New Wave, Charlie (2002) received arguably the roughest critical and commercial ride of Demme’s career. When it was announced that Jonathan Demme was to remake the 1962 Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate many – including myself – thought it a dangerous step after his disappointing revision of Stanley Donen’s elegant 1963 thriller Charade, The Truth about Charlie.