The Manchurian Candidate falls somewhat in between the two. Conversely, Seconds is a masterpiece because the obstacle is all too ordinary, but defeating it is futile. This is why his Seven Days in May doesn’t quite work. The obstacle is formidable, but the challenge of overcoming it is not. Frankenheimer’s suspense is not built around impossible scenarios, but on feeling one is up against the impossible. What’s so exceptional about the film is how it takes surprisingly shaggy material and turns it into a compelling thriller. Even in the relatively optimistic period of Kennedy’s presidency, something was amiss in the government. They felt the larger forces out there, dictating our lives. I guess we learned not to do it again.” Director John Frankenheimer, screenwriter George Axelrod, and novelist Richard Condon were way ahead of the New Hollywood gang in recognizing the limited capacity of one man to change the course of anything. “What did we learn?” “I don’t know, sir.” “I don’t fuckin’ know either. When the hero – Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) – is left to grapple with everything that happened, it plays as a less humorous version of the final scene in the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading. Later, when the hero has a chance to capture the threat, he lets him go, only for the threat to reverse the danger on those above him, and on himself. But once the plot really kicks into action, the chase is hardly on – it pauses immediately for an extended flashback to a happy summer in the life of another character, the man most immediately threatened by the grand plot. The first hour is spent dropping clues and suggestions, deterring the hero’s claims, and mostly providing a ton of exposition that will pay off in the second.
From a structural standpoint, The Manchurian Candidate is an odd sort of thriller.