The Manchurian Candidate Film Techniques

Released in 1962, The Manchurian Candidate, produced and directed by John Frankenheimer, is a film about a Medal of Honor winner who is brainwashed by communists in order to carry out a plan to assassinate a presidential candidate. Set during the early years of Cold War, The Manchurian Candidate plays on the contemporary fear, known as McCarthyism, that members of the communist’s party plan to take over America by using brainwashing techniques and infiltrating government agencies. During his time, John Frankenheimer was famous for his “innovative camera angles”, which can be found in almost every scene throughout the movie. These camera angles, as well as other various film techniques such as mise-en-scène and editing and sound techniques,

help demonstrate a lack of human agency during the Cold War; they also convey the idea that force, which deprives humans of their agency, corrupts whoever beholds it.
In Major Bennet Marco’s dream, both camera work and editing techniques convey a lack of human agency during the Cold War by showing that the brainwashed American soldiers are completely under the control of the communists. The scene begins when the camera zooms in on the face of Major Marco in his sleep, which gives viewers the feeling that they are looking inside Marco’s mind. The shot then dissolves into his dream, which opens with a panning shot. In this single shot, the camera takes viewers around an entire room, starting with Major Marco and his soldiers who are siting in chairs on a stage behind a woman talking about plants. The camera moves over a sign that indicates the setting -- a garden club meeting in a hotel room -- and passes over several more women in the audience. Some are listening to the lecture and taking notes, discussing flowers, drinking tea, eating cake, or smoking cigarettes. The cinematographic technique of panning in this scene makes us believe that what we see is real because it shows us every detail and action that is in and going on in the room. It is not until the end of the pan that we realize that what we have just seen was through the eyes of the brainwashed soldiers. This realization comes with the understanding that the soldiers completely lack agency since they believe that they are in such a ridiculous setting. The pan ends with the soldiers again, except this time they are sitting in front of a wall with the faces of Stalin and Mao Zedong and behind a Chinese man giving a speech to a room full of communists. The man, Dr. Yen Lo, tells his audience that he has “conditioned” the soldiers to believe that they are sitting in a hotel lobby during a ladies’ garden club meeting while waiting out a storm. The scene continues while Dr. Yen Lo gives his speech. The scene transitions back and forth from the fictional perspectives of the soldiers, who believe they are a hotel lobby, and the real perspectives of the communists, who are in an auditorium. Even when the perspective changes to those of the soldiers, we hear the same speech Dr. Lo is giving his audience, except we see a women part of the garden club in his place. These back and forth transitions from the perspectives of the soldiers to those of the communists reinforce the idea the panning shot gives us that the soldiers have absolutely no agency because they actually believe that they are in such an absurd setting; they are unable to think for themselves and realize what is actually going on because they have been so deeply brainwashed by the communists.
In the scene where Raymond kills his boss Holborn Gaines, camera work, editing, and non-diegetic sound convey a deprivation of human agency by essentially portraying Raymond as a puppet.

The entire scene, which is taken in one long shot, begins with a shot of the door to Gaines’s bedroom. Then we see only the back of a man, who we assume is Raymond, only recognizable by his emotionless voice, open the door. The rest of the scene continues this way; one side of the frame shows Raymond’s back and the other shows Mr. Gaines lying in his bed. This perspective of Raymond suggests that he is not even a person; rather, he is just a body, a mere puppet, that is blindly carrying out someone else’s orders because he is incapable of making his own choices. As Raymond walks into the room and moves closer to Mr. Gaines, ominous music begins to play and becomes increasingly louder until Raymond’s entire back takes up the entire frame, resulting in a completely black screen, suggesting that Raymond has carried out his orders. The threatening music and the shot ending in a black screen before Raymond kills Gaines further shows that Raymond has no agency because they give viewers the sense that someone is controlling

Raymond.
The mise-en-scène, camera work, and sound in the scene in which Eleanor Shaw gives her son, Raymond Shaw, the order to assassinate the presidential candidate show that force corrupts the beholder.

The scene opens with a close-up on a queen of diamonds costume and zooms out to capture both the costume and Eleanor Shaw in a single frame. Throughout the movie, the queen of diamonds serves as a trigger that places Raymond Shaw in a state in which he is fully under the control of whomever speaks to him. The zoom-out technique to begin the scene and the placement of the queen of diamonds next to Eleanor Shaw suggests that she is the queen of diamonds, and that Raymond, who is sitting in a chair in front of her, is under her control. As Eleanor gives Raymond his instructions, the shot is not only a close-up of her face, but also at an angle that makes viewers seem as if they are looking up at her, placing her in a position of higher authority. The scene is also completely silent during the time Eleanor delivers her orders, which helps viewers focus on the intensity of her voice since there is no other sound to listen to but her voice. The placement of the queen of diamonds, close-up and angle of Eleanor’s face in the frame, and silence during the time she speaks allows viewers to focus on Eleanor as someone in a position of total control, or someone who beholds force. According to Simone Weil, force is something that deprives someone of his or her agency. In her essay “The Iliad,

or The Poem of Force”, Weil makes an argument that force “intoxicates” its possessor. In this particular scene, the idea that Eleanor is intoxicated with power is reinforced by the film techniques that place viewers in a position that allow them to see how her control over Raymond has corrupted her; she has used her own son for personal gain.
In The Manchurian Candidate, mise-en-scène, camera work, editing techniques, and sound convey that human agency was lacking during the Cold War. Although the idea that someone can be “conditioned” to assassinate on order seems far-fetched today, many Americans once believed that a threat like this was very possible. Frankenheimer used film techniques to re-enforce this paranoia, and in doing so, suggested that the use of force to deprive one of his or her agency occurred during the Cold War.