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Title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
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| Complete credited cast: | |||
| Frank Sinatra | ... | Major Bennett Marco | |
| Laurence Harvey | ... | Raymond Shaw | |
| Janet Leigh | ... | Eugenie Rose Chaney | |
| Angela Lansbury | ... | Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin | |
| Henry Silva | ... | Chunjin | |
| James Gregory | ... | Senator John Yerkes Iselin | |
| Leslie Parrish | ... | Jocelyn Jordan | |
| John McGiver | ... | Senator Thomas Jordan | |
| Khigh Dhiegh | ... | Dr. Yen Lo | |
| James Edwards | ... | Corporal Allen Melvin | |
 |
Douglas Henderson | ... | Colonel Milt |
| Albert Paulsen | ... | Zilkov | |
| Barry Kelley | ... | Secretary of Defense | |
| Lloyd Corrigan | ... | Holborn Gaines | |
|
|
Madame Spivy | ... | Female Berezovo |
Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) is an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army. He served valiantly as a Captain in the Korean war and his Sergeant, Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), even received the Medal of Honor. Marco has a major problem however: he has a recurring nightmare, one where two members of his squad were killed by Shaw. He's put on indefinite sick leave and visits Shaw in New York City. Shaw, for his part. has established himself well, despite the misgivings of his domineering mother, Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin (Dame Angela Lansbury). She is a red-baiter, accusing anyone who disagrees with her right-wing reactionary views of being a Communist. Raymond hates her, not only for how she's treated him, but equally because of his stepfather, the ineffectual U.S. Senator John Iselin (James Gregory), who is intent on seeking higher office. When Marco learns that others in his Korean War unit have had nightmares similar to his own, he realizes that something happened to all of ... Written by garykmcd/Robert Sieger
As a long time fan of this film I note there is little that has gone unmentioned in the positive reviews - except this. I would like to put in a word of praise for the academy award winning editor Ferris Webster. Webster's crowning achievement was the famed 'garden party' sequence in which the malevolent communist agents are transformed into ladies at a garden club and back again, the vertigo of the circling camera draws us into the actual mental state of the brainwashed captives. Each camera movement, each shot was so exquisitely timed and placed that this is almost equal to the shower-bath scene in Psycho as a classic of modern editing. This scene is still studied in film schools by future editors. Also, the cutting in the finale scene at the convention expertly creates a Hitchcockian suspense totally dependent on the editing.
Another aside, Angela Lansbury 'cut her teeth' for this role playing the ruthless newspaper owner in the Tracy-Hepburn film State of the Union. In that film she managed to upstage Hepburn herself! And it was obvious that she should play the 'biggest, baddest mother of all'.