54. I Put A Spell on You &...

Lyrics

I put a spell on you, because you're mine 
You better stop the things that you're doin' 
I said, "Watch out, I ain't lyin'", yeah 
I ain't gonna take none of your, foolin' around 
I ain't gonna take none of your, puttin' me down 
I put a spell on you because you're mine, all right 

I put a spell on you, because you're mine 
You better stop, the things that you're doin' 
I said, "Watch out, I ain't lyin'", yeah 
I ain't gonna take none of your, foolin' around 
I ain't gonna take none of your, puttin' me down 
I put a spell on you because you're mine, all right and I took it down


Creedence Clearwater Revival (wonderful name) is a band I should, theoretically, love. Yet none of their songs really connect with me. I can't say that there is anything wrong with this one either (and it's not even originally their own) but I don't really care about it. It did gave me a chance to watch a great movie about a man who is put under a (sort of) spell and be controlled through it to do some really awful things,

The Movie: The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

Sometimes you need to think about a movie to realize that it is great, or maybe watch it again. This is not such a movie. Right after watching it you realize that this is absolutely a masterpiece. I had before this seen the second half of the 2004 remake. I remember finding it quite enjoyable, but not much else. So, while I expected this to be a good movie (and a better one than the remake) I didn't expect it to be this good. It tells a rather complicated, entangled story in a very patient way. Frankenheimer has the confidence to show scenes and shots that don't make much sense right away, but will a bit later on. It diverges a lot from its plot, only to show us later that every diversion was a sensible one and fitted in the larger picture. And most of the individual scenes are so well conceived, written and acted that even if they wouldn't have all fit together, they would still be fascinating and wonderful. It may be the best cold war satire/drama I've yet seen.

Its basic conceit is quite fascinating and surprisingly simple. During the Korean War nine American soldiers have been kidnapped by communists who have hypnotized them to believe they emerged victorious out of a seemingly unwinnable battle. All of this, because of the great leadership of sergeant Raymond Shaw. It is Shaw himself who is actually the main target of the communists hypnosis. He is hypnotizeed in such a way that any time he sees or hears about the diamond queen in a deck of cards he can be controlled to do anything such as kill two of his fellow soldiers. The biggest strength of the movie may be the fact that it is totally uninterested in keeping this a secret. In fact, we see exactly what the communists plans with Shaw are, and how they intend to use him in what is basically the first scene of the film. The rest of the movie is about the political and personal consequences of this evil communist plot. This scene in which the communists' hypnosis is revealed is right away the best scene in the film. It also shows immediately how confident the film is in its storytelling abilities. When the scene opens we see an old lady talking about flowers in front of a bunch of other old ladies and the soldiers who we previously saw fighting in Korea. It appears we are at some sort of florist convention. And we are a bit surprised as to what these soldiers are doing here and how this can be of any possible importance to the plot. But eventually the film shows us that what we are seeing is the point of view of the hypnotized soldiers. All these old ladies are in actuality most of the evil communist leaders of the world. And the main old lady talking is a Chinese scientist who is showing off how greatly he can hypnotize Shaw and how this can be used. He shows that he can control Shaw and the soldiers so well that he can order Shaw to kill two of his soldiers and no one will be bothered by it. And when this wonderfully odd and absurd scene ends it is used seamlessly to kick off the plot, when it is revealed what we were seeing was a recurring nightmare of lieutenant Ben Marco, one of the soldiers present at the 'florist convention.' Soon realizing that this is not an ordinarily nightmare, he goes on to investigate.

Though it sounds like it from this plot description the movie is not some sort of satire on communism or an anti-communist parable. The movie surely doesn't present a very rosy view of communism, but it doesn't present a rosy view of American politics either. The movie is basically a satire power-hungry politicians. It presents the idea that the all the fights about ideology in the Cold War, were simply fights about who has the power and the money. Ideology was just a nice cover for the participants. A Russian communist spy working on cover operations in America boasts to a fellow communist that his operation is one of the few to actually bring in a profit. It is quite interesting that he doesn't mention anything about whether his operation is successfully spreading communism to America or anything. The American politicians may be portrayed even worse though. The main villains in this movie are Shaw's mother Eleanor and her husband John Iselin, who is not Raymond's real father. The portrayal of John is basically a scathing satire of Joseph McCarthy, only Iselin may be even worse. He accuses the Secretary of Defense that there are communists working in his department. But his accusations are totally random, constantly making up a different amount of communists, only to finally settle for the accusation that there are 'exactly 57 communists working in the Defense department.' But John Iselin is just his wife's puppet. She is really the one who works out his strategies and tells him exactly what to do. And (I guess this is a spoiler) she is also the American 'controller' of her son. She can hypnotize him to do exactly what she wants. And she does, using him to kill many of her political enemies. She certainly cooperates with the Russian and Chinese, but it is left relatively ambiguous whether she is communist, using anti-communist sentiments as a cover (She basically accuses every politician to disagree with her of being an anti-American communist). Or whether she is simply a power hungry politician willing to cooperate with anyone to come to power. In one of her final scenes she exclaims that ones she has the power she will bring the communists down, because when she asked them for a hypnotizable killer, she didn't expect they'd actually choose her son.

John Frankenheimer really shows he can direct anything in this movie. He can film any scene in any style that's necessary for that particular style There are naturally scenes here which play very surrealistically, and then they are (impeccably) followed by scenes which are a realistic depiction of the political games and the press' reporting these games. There is a very short scene in which we follow a car driving through the city and it seems to come straight out of a European new wave movie. Character examinations are easily followed by political satire. Thriller elements by comedy. Frankenheimer directs a martial arts/kung fu scene, which is even more impressive considering the fact that kung fu movies weren't very known or popular yet in 1962 America. There is a great scene between Shaw and Marco that starts with comic, nearly Seinfeldian, dialogue about why it is a good thing Shaw didn't get a Christmas card. This dialogue flawlessly flows into a flashback in which Shaw tells, how he lost the love of his life due to his mother. The whole flashback plays like a short romantic drama. And it adds poignancy to scenes later in the movie.

Lastly the actors shouldn't be forgotten. I don't Frank Sinatra as a singer at all. And he probably wasn't a very good person in real life either. But in his acting and his looks he reminds here very much of a young Jack Nicholson. He gives an amazingly great performance as Bennett Marco. So does Laurence Harvey as Raymond Shaw. Raymond is really a uniquely conceived character. He is basically a good man. He is just not very lovable as he puts it himself. He annoys people because he seems to take everything way too seriously, hardly ever joking. The evolution of the relationship between Marco and Shaw is one of the many great things about the film. Marco dislikes Shaw at the beginning of the movie. Not for a specific reason, but because the movie understands that sometimes you dislike someone, because of certain characteristics, without necessarily thinking that it is a bad person. As the movie progresses Marco does start to like him more, but they never become great friends, which would happen in most other movies. Their relationship is a completely normal one, basically one like you'll have with the most people you'll meet in life.   
But it is Angela Lansbury who gives the best performance in the movie. She creates one of the most memorable villains I've seen in movies, playing her Elaonor with a very cold demeanor. She is constantly trembling, always seeming to explode with anger. And when she sometimes does, it is vigorous. Her performance is even more impressive, considering the fact that I've only known her as the kindly grandmother detective from Murder, She Wrote. It is a role as far removed from her role here as can possibly be. In the remake Eleanor is played by Meryl Streep, and she isn't nearly on the same level as Lansbury. Which is not something you can often say about Streep.