The Manchurian Candidate feels like a case in point to me. The story is a political one, always with potential for controversy. And the film was obviously so touchy that the star, Frank Sinatra, had it pulled from the public for over twenty-five years, due to a scene which he felt came too close to the Kennedy assassination (which occurred the very year after the film`s release) to be acceptable to viewers.
The story, in any case, is both bizarre and complex. During the Korean War, a group of soldiers (including Sinatra), led by Lawrence Harvey as the general have been mysteriously captured by a bunch of renegade Koreans. The next shot is after the war, in which Harvey is honoured for having saved his troops in a daring escape. But something is not quite right here. Sinatra is having disturbing nightmares involving his capture. And when Sinatra is asked how he felt about the general, he suddenly turns robotic, and claims that Harvey was the kindest, bravest man he has ever met. Sinatra sounds as if he is under a hypnotic spell....... is this true? And what really happened in Korea?
There is another storyline, involving Harvey`s turbulent relationship with his mother, played by Angela Lansbury in a role miles, if not countries, removed from Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote. She and her new husband, campaigning to be re-elected as senator, have launched a strong campaign against the supposed Communist influence in certain sectors of the American government. Harvey not only dislikes mom`s politics, but actively loathes her as a human being, and shocks her by taking a job for a man whom the mother sees as a Communist of the worst kind. (Harvey snaps back by saying that the employer is an active Republican)
These two storylines come together, because it is revealed fairly quickly that something did happen in Korea. That something is the hypnosis of Harvey by the Communists, who took advantage of his cold, detached personality and excellent marksmanship to make him an unwitting assassin. And there is an even more shocking revelation linking these two plots, one which creates all sorts of implications.
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