During the Cold War, this premise could still be understood (just barely) as satire-an extrapolation of our worst paranoid fantasies. Kennedy’s assassination, was about an American serviceman, played by Laurence Harvey, who was brainwashed in Korea and turned into an assassin in order to elevate to the presidency the senator married to his mother-a Joe McCarthy clone actually fronting for the communists. The original film, released in 1962 but taken out of circulation after John F.
You thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was well-timed? The Manchurian Candidate opened the day after the close of the Democratic Convention. Demme’s redo is in almost every way inferior to John Frankenheimer’s original, but it has going for it a sensationalistic immediacy that seems equal parts Parallax View and Michael Moore (without the macabre levity). But occasionally a new conception makes sense-like Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which used as its ghastly-satiric setting San Francisco’s human-potential movement.
Classics, by definition, are one-of-a-kind. In truth, the films that should be remade are the ones that wasted good premises (anybody up for remaking Fantastic Voyage?). When it was announced that Jonathan Demme was remaking The Manchurian Candidate, the greatest paranoid political thriller ever made in this country, cries of Sacrilege! rang out. and Cinémathèque Québécoise.Denzel Washington in The Manchurian Candidate. Meanwhile, another scanner, Darryl Revok, is organizing an underground scanner army. ConSec, a security and weapons company with a deceptive plan, attempts to corner the market on scanners and recruits a homeless scanner named Cameron Vale. Print courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive.ĩ:30 p.m.: David Cronenberg, Scanners, 1981, 103 min., 35mmĬronenberg wrote and directed this science fiction thriller about a group of people known as “scanners,” gifted individuals who have developed telekinetic and telepathic powers as a result of experimental drugs given to their mothers during pregnancy. The film is based on Richard Condon’s 1959 novel, which was inspired by a study of actual POWs who were effectively brainwashed in communist camps. Angela Lansbury defies typecasting as Shaw’s deviously controlling mother, a secret communist operative. politician, who has been brainwashed to become a political assassin. The film centers on Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), a former Korean War POW and son of a prominent U.S. This classic thriller harnesses Cold War paranoia through an effective combination of themes - thought control, multinational conspiracy, and political assassination. Together, the four films explore thought control and political manipulation as well as creative resistance, pointing toward malevolent agencies’ use of experimental mind control techniques and exploitative tactics, and counterstrategies brought to light in key performance moments of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when celebrity activism and rock ‘n’ roll were influential forces for change.ħ:00 p.m.: John Frankenheimer, The Manchurian Candidate, 1962, 126 min., 35mm At the historic Castro Theatre, we present two double features inspired by our Live Projects 1 Field Trip.