‘The Manchurian Candidate’ (1962)
‘Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.’ Why is it that all the ex-GIs who served with Shaw, a Korean War hero, finds it necessary to say that about him? And that they go into a trance-like state when they do? This tale of brainwashing and gaslighting centers on the political ambitions of Shaw’s parents: his father, a Senator in the mold of Joe McCarthy who peddles fierce anti-communist sentiment in a bid to be the running-mate to his party’s next presidential nominee, and his wife (Angela Lansbury), an actual communist agent who uses her husband’s bluster as the perfect shield. ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ is invoked a lot these days to refer to a foreign power’s influence over a presidential candidate – but its most powerful insight may be in its depiction of the gaslighting Lansbury’s character engages in: the idea that she projects onto her opponents everything vile that she does herself. —CB