A study of John Frankenheimer's 1962 political conspiracy thriller The Manchurian Candidate in the BFI Film Classics series

"It may be the most sophisticated political thriller ever made in Hollywood," film critic Pauline Kael wrote of John Frankenheimer's terrifying 1962 political thriller about an American serviceman brainwashed in Korea and made into an assassin. Sophisticated to be sure, it's also a headlong fall through the looking-glass of American politics and the most deeply prophetic film of the second half of the American century. As Greil Marcus reconstructs the drama, The Manchurian Candidate is a movie in which the director and actors, including Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury in an Academy Award-nominated performance, were suddenly capable of anything, beyond any expectations. This edition includes a new foreword highlighting the movie's terrifying contemporary relevance in the age of Trump and Russian interference in the US Presidential election.

"Marcus is a compelling writer, and he hits the nail on the head when he talks of “the Iron Maiden of repression,” which sums up Laurence Harvey's acting in The Manchurian Candidate." - The Best American Poetry blog