The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian candidate was made in 1959 by Richard Condon. This film is a political thriller novel. The son of prominent is political family who is brainwashed into being an assassin for a communist party.

The Manchurian candidate (1962):

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury, and featuring Henry Silva, James Gregory, Leslie Parrish and John McGiver. The picture was directed by John Frankenheimer from an adaptation by George Axelrod of Richard Condon's 1959 novel. This film was directed by John Frankenheinner, the film is in black and white.

The Manchurian candidate (2004):

This film was directed by Johnathan Demme, the stars in this film were Denzel Washinton, Live Schreiber, Meryl Streep and Kimberly Elise.

In this film there is one main (resourceful hero) Major Ben Marco, he is trying to regain and unravel his sanity.

This film is made up of different Genre’s, they are as follows Political Thriller, Paranoid thriller and physiological thriller.

The director elaborates and makes the film bigger than life, also sadder than life and darker and bigger. This film is a manipulation of the human life.

This version differs from the original version, where the drowning in the water creates a dreamlike state by the remote lake. The director wanted to symbolise the fact that the main characters were drowning.

In this version the use of Non-diegetic music enhances the tension when Raymond approaches the lake to kill his next victim, this is the key to the thriller scene.

At the end of the film Raymond decides to sacrifice himself. Also we noticed that there was an inappropriate relationship between Raymond and Eleanor.

I preferred the 2004 version as this version was the recent one and so it wasn’t in black and white and also the film just seemed more realistic as it was up to date.