I Got 57 Problems and Polish Caviar Ain't One
A Hyper-Focussed Approach to The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) – A Hyper-Focussed Approach
Happy Election Day! And by “happy” I mean “Just a few hours left until polls close, I promise.”
Because it is Election Day and because I – like many people across the US and world – am feeling a mixture of exhaustion, sadness, unbridled fear, cautious optimism, pride, nausea, suspense, sickening excitement, anxiety, and, dare I say it, an ounce of hope, this review is going to be whatever it is. Probably short, mostly stream of consciousness, a smattering of thoughts in the direction of analysis. And it’s unfortunate because John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962) is quite easily one of the better films I’ve ever seen, and it deserves to be seen and critically considered by as many Americans right now as possible. Genuinely, if you have not seen this film, I highly recommend seeking it out.
The Manchurian Candidate is a Cold War film about a group of American people who have had their minds and souls broken by the Chinese and Russian enemies of their country, brainwashed into doing the bidding of those enemies in support of installing an incompetent idiot as the Republican nominee for President of the United States of America. This group of Americans who have been so abused and broken are, in the film, a division of US Army soldiers in the Korean War. One soldier, Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is the key foreign asset, an assassin unleashed to do the bidding of his American operator. Another in this group is Major Ben Marco (Frank Sinatra) whose own levels of brainwashing and handling are up for debate (I have my ideas, but I won’t spoil the film!).
I have called this review a hyper-focussed approach because I think the film is so spectacular that any macro view would do a disservice to those who have not seen it, so instead, I want to focus on the use of Lincoln.
I have been working on a book chapter recently about iconography of Christmas and what it means when it pops up in American cultural media – what ideas are imported and how is it used in those spaces? Is it gently in the background or assertively centred; is it commented on or silent; is it authentic or parodied; is it importing a historical message or redirecting one; is it natural in the scene or is it forced; is it implying a patriotic message or criticising the lack of one? I think these questions tell us a lot about the subliminal messaging within films, how the director is silently and subtly guiding our interpretations of what we’re seeing and adding visual nuance behind the audible dialogue. In The Manchurian Candidate, although Christmas is indeed invoked in it, I want to ask all of these questions about Lincoln.
Not too long before this film, Frank Capra was the Father of Populist Cinema. I swear this is relevant. Capra made films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), and State of the Union (1948) that all engage with populist cinematic tropes to some degree. Populist cinema is a genre of films that focus on the power of the People in opposition to a larger, systemic or structural threat. The hallmarks of populist cinema are classically “American” iconography and motifs with one of the most common being the populist underdog hero drawing inspiration from the invocation of historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln or Andrew Jackson who were seen as Presidents for the People. Populist cinema largely died out in the late 1940s (for reasons I delve into in my dissertation!).
In The Manchurian Candidate, we have a subversion of these populist cinematic tropes. Lincoln is ubiquitous in this film, but we have no populist hero to be roused to patriotic action against the political machine. We have no Jimmy Stewart rallying for the Boy Scouts or giving loans to the diverse inhabitants of Bedford Falls. We have a mentally broken assassin staring emptily at Lincoln.
The Republican fascists who have made a deal with the Chinese and Russian governments to brainwash Shaw, assassinate political rivals, and seize power surround themselves with busts and portraits of Lincoln, so much so that the first image we see of Lincoln is a portrait in a glass frame reflecting the puppet politician back to us. This shot is so beautifully blocked: Lincoln staring straight at us while a spineless fraud looking to undermine the American people and destroy their democracy has his back to the audience, wanting to be seen in the same frame as Lincoln without the strength, nobility, or decency to actually face the People honestly. The invocation of Lincoln speaks to the desire to seem presidential and populist without having to do any of the work to be so.
In other scenes, Lincoln’s busts actually frame the shot. In one, a bust of the president is in the foreground on the right of the screen, looking left. A portrait of Lincoln is in the background looking forward to the audience. In the middle ground, one of the fascist coordinators espouses anti-American rhetoric as the gazes of the Lincolns bear down on them, almost judging them, giving us a stark juxtaposition of two types of American ideologies. In this scene, the anti-American rhetoric is specifically an echo of McCarthyism in the truest sense: the speaker is brazenly and baselessly accusing their political opponents of being Communist enemies of the US when they themselves are an active Russian/Chinese ally working to dismantle the US electoral process.
The ubiquity of Lincoln in this film suggests that the central fascist, the American enemy of the American people is attempting to justify their anti-American ideology by co-opting populist icons such as Lincoln. They’re trying to surround themselves with icons of patriotic flare to deflect from the objective fact that they are as unpatriotic as they come. It’s all an illusion. Red, white, and blue smoke and Lincoln’s portraits as mirrors distracting the American people from the morally vacant, needlessly bloody, politically soulless power grab they’re attempting.
In another scene, the titular idiot Senator who is being installed as the Manchurian candidate for president is literally dressed in a crass, shabby Lincoln costume at a costume party. Reaching over an expensive display of hors d’oeuvres coloured and shaped into the American flag, the faux-Lincoln takes a giant, messy scoop right from the centre of the flag, disrupting the stars and stripes and taking more than is fair for a single cracker. Turning to his wealthy companions, the elected official who repeatedly has accused others of Communist affiliation says, “it’s alright; it’s Polish caviar” and everyone laughs, the joke being that the caviar is most definitely not Polish but Russian at the peak of the Cold War. His accusation, in effect, is an admission of guilt.
Isn’t it interesting what we can read into media by thinking about how they employ invocations of Lincoln? It is to me.
I’m tired, y’all. I hope you voted if you are able, and I hope you have a wonderful evening doing whatever it is you need and want to do. I made a self-care mac & cheese and that was a great decision for me. I also watched this absolutely phenomenal 62-year-old film that has in no way any bearing whatsoever on today’s world because we all learned not to trust far right foreign assets when it came out and we’ve never had another problem with it since, so much so that the 2004 remake with Denzel Washington wasn’t a reminder of the very important lessons in it but rather a celebration of us not making these mistakes.
P.S. The Republican fascists in this film have their convention at Madison Square Garden and get national attention for batshit claims like deciding that there are 57 card-carrying Communists in the Department of Defense based solely on vibes and Heinz ketchup. Watch the movie.