The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

 

• Images and elements of news media are everywhere in this film. What kind of portrayal does director John Frankenheimer give to news media, and what kind of argument is he setting up about news?
  
  
• How is the news media manipulated by people in the film, and how does the media in turn affect those same public people?
  
  
• What sort of implied argument is going one with regard to paranoia and media? (Pay attention to the press conferences.)
  
  
• How are the notions of paranoia, brainwashing, politics and media drawn together in this film? What's the relation?
  
  
• If you've seen the recent 2004 version of this film, how do they compare, and does the new one do anything particular novel/better/worse than the original?
  
  
• Cool side-note: The actor who played the brainwashed assasin, Laurence Harvey, had a British-born daughter named Domino Harvey. She never fit in with the Hollywood scene, and after getting kicked out of school and modelling, she became a bounty hunter in Los Angeles. She died in 2005. Her strange biography was filmed (and fictionalized) in the movie Domino.

 

 

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The Politics of Paranoia and Hatred | The Boston Globe (2004)

Movie To Be Released After Being Withheld For 15 Years | Associated Press (1987)

The Manchurian Candidate -Brainwashing is the Theme | The New York Times (1962)

Kennedy's Death Affects Movies | The New York Times (1963)