page_title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)
section_title: Plot
hierarchical_section_title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film) / Plot
caption_attribution_description: English: Laurence Harvey (left) and Frank Sinatra (right) filming a scene from The Manchurian Candidate in Central Park, New York. Harvey just walked off the pier.
context_page_description: The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American neo noir psychological political thriller film about the Cold War and sleeper agents. It was directed and produced by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay was written by George Axelrod and was based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate. The film's leading actors are Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh, with Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva and James Gregory in supporting roles.
  The plot centers on the Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw, the progeny of a prominent political family. Shaw was a prisoner of war during the conflict in Korea and while being held was brainwashed by his captors. After his discharge back into civilian life, he becomes an unwitting assassin involved in an international communist conspiracy. Officials from China and the Soviet Union employ Shaw as a sleeper agent in an attempt to subvert and take over the United States government.
  The film was released in the United States on October 24, 1962, at the height of U.S.–Soviet hostility during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was well-received by critics and was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress and Best Editing.
context_section_description: During the Korean War, in 1950 the Soviets and Chinese capture a U.S. Army platoon and take the men to Manchuria in communist China. Three days later, Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) and Captain Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) return to UN lines. Upon Marco's recommendation, Shaw is awarded the Medal of Honor for saving their lives in combat. Shaw returns to the United States to a hero's welcome where he is exploited by his ambitious mother, Mrs. Eleanor Iselin (Angela Lansbury), to further her husband (Shaw's stepfather) U.S. Senator John Yerkes Iselin's (James Gregory) political career. When asked to describe him, Marco and the other soldiers automatically respond that, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." In fact, Shaw is a cold, sad, unsympathetic loner.
  In the following years, Marco, since promoted to major and assigned to Army Intelligence, suffers from a recurring nightmare. In it, a hypnotized Shaw blithely and brutally murders the two missing soldiers before an assembly of military leaders from the communist nations, during a practical demonstration of a revolutionary brainwashing technique. Marco is compelled to investigate, but with no solid evidence to back his claims, fails to receive his superiors' support. However, Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon, Allen Melvin (James Edwards), has had the same nightmare. When Melvin and Marco separately identify photos of the same two men from their dreams who are leading figures in communist governments, Army Intelligence agrees to help Marco investigate.
  Meanwhile, Eleanor drives the ascension of Iselin, a McCarthy-like demagogue stirring domestic turmoil and climbing the political ladder based on claims that constantly varying numbers of communists work within the Department of Defense. Shaw, who broke with his mother and step-father immediately upon his return to America, is gradually revealed to have been programmed by Russian and Chinese communists as a sleeper agent who will blindly obey orders without any memory of his actions. His heroism was a false memory implanted in the platoon during their brainwashing in Manchuria. His programming is triggered by seeing the Queen of Diamonds card while playing solitaire after being induced by his handlers.
  Several years pass before Shaw finds happiness when he rekindles a youthful romance with Jocelyn Jordan (Leslie Parrish), the daughter of liberal Senator Thomas Jordan (John McGiver), one of his stepfather's political rivals. Mrs. Iselin had previously broken up the relationship, but now facilitates the couple's reunion to garner Jordan's support for Iselin's bid for the Vice Presidency. Although pleased with the match, Jordan states he will block all of Iselin's to seek their party's nomination. Jocelyn, wearing a Queen of Diamonds costume at a party for her thrown by the Iselins, inadvertently triggers Shaw's programming and elopes with him. In response to the senator's rebuff, Mrs. Iselin, who is revealed to be Shaw's American handler, triggers him to kill Jordan at his home, shooting Jocelyn as well when she enters the scene. Afterwards, Shaw has no knowledge of his actions and is grief-stricken upon learning of the murders.
  Eventually discovering the card's role in Shaw's conditioning, Marco uses a forced deck in an attempt to deprogram him and reveal his next assignment, which appears imminent. Mrs. Iselin primes her son to assassinate their party's presidential nominee at the height of the ongoing political convention so that Senator Iselin, as the vice-presidential candidate, will become the nominee by default. In the uproar, he will immediately seek emergency powers that when elected will, in Mrs. Iselin's words, "make martial law seem like anarchy". Mrs. Iselin tells Shaw that while she had requested a programmed assassin for the task, she never knew it would be her own son, who was selected by the communists in order to bind her more closely to their cause. Kissing Shaw on the lips, she vows that once in power she w
caption: Shaw (Harvey, left) with Major Marco (Sinatra) after having jumped into a lake in New York City's Central Park when his programming was accidentally triggered
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