: Study Questions: Week Four

Red Menaces and Psycho-Moms.

On the Waterfront (1954)

The Manchurian Candidate (1949).

Cold War Threats to the Dream

Unlike The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Psycho, the films we will examine this week are explicitly political, and the politics is shaped by the Cold War, and the hopes and anxieties which characterize the American Dream form part of each film's ideological background. Both Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate Are based in the historical events from the early 1950s when the Cold War was at its chilliest. On the Waterfront is based on U.S. Senate hearings into corrupt labor practices in the Longshoreman's Union, which coincided with Senator Joseph McCarthy's hunt for communists he claimed had infested the federal government and the House Un-American Activities Committee's search for communists in the film industry. The Manchurian Candidate is based on the experience of American prisoners of war in Korea. Evidence that they had collaborated with their captors hed many to believe they had been the victims of "brainwashing," which transformed them into agents of an international conspiracy.

The political perspectives of the two films, however, are very different. Kazan's film reflects the attidudes of the period in which it was made. Kazan himself had cooperated with HUAC, identifying friends and associates who had been associated with leftist organizations during the 1930s and 1940s, including the Communist Party. The hero of On the Waterfront, Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), under the influence of the woman he loves (Eva Marie Saint) and a politically active priest (Karl Malden), redeems himself by becoming a government informer and freeing his union from the tryannical rule of Mr. Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). The obvious parallels between the corrupt labor leaders and American communists point up the ways in which the values associated with the American Dream were seen as serving as a bulwark against subversion.

Conversely, Frankenheimer's film, produced eight years later, offers a very different interpretation of the anti-communist crusade inspired by the Cold War. The crusaders are not only treated satirically, they are also equated with their communist enemies. Even the traditional American values which they hypocritically embrace seem to turn destructive. By the early 1960s, the Dream had begun to sour.

1. How does the death of Jerry Doyle mark the beginning of Terry Malloy's (Marlon Brando) spiritual journey?

2. In what ways is the Doyle family presented as worthy aspirants to the American Dream? Consider "Pop" Doyle's (John Hamilton) treatment of his family, Edie's (Eva Marie Saint) education, and her father's plans for her future.

3. In what ways is the Malloy family the antithesis of the Doyle's. Think of the relationship between Terry and Charlie (Rod Steiger).

4. After World War II, and particularly during the Cold War, the American Dream was promised to all Americans. How does the fact that the Doyles are working-class Irish Catholics living in urban Hoboken, New Jersey a reflection of that promise? How are they different ethnically and socially from the families in The Best Years of our Lives and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit?

5. What similarities can you find between the actions of Terry and those of Hank Fallon/Vic Pardo (Edmund O'Brien) in White Heat? Why are they considered heroic for allying themselves with the federal authorities rather than friends and family? How might this behavior indicate some basic conflicts between patriotism and the claims of family and community?

6. Terry claims that he hates being used as a stool pigeon, but he finds redemption in informing? How does the film try to resolve this contradiction? What three influences convince Terry to testify against Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) and his associates?

7. Who is the "Mr. Upstairs" feared by Friendly? If he can't be identified individually, what class or what institutions does he represent? Why, do you think, he remains a mystery figure?

8. What, in your judgement, is the political significance of having the honest longshoreman organized by their parish priest rather than a labor leader or a pro-labor politician?

9. What is the aesthetic significance of having Terry's voice drowned out by a whistle as he tells Edie about her brother's death? In what ways are their facial expressions more eloquent than their words?

10. After testifying, Terry is ostracized by his colleagues and shunned by the neighborhood children. Yet he rejects Edie's suggestion that they get a farm in the West and start over. Why?

11. With Johnny Friendly defeated, the new boss tells the men to get to work. They do and the warehouse door slams shut in the film's final shot. Is this ending somewhat ambivalent about the future? Does it suggest a new beginning or another sort of bondage? Why?

12. One of The Manchurian Candidate's dominant motifs, the Queen of Diamonds, appears first in the opening credits. How does it identify the film's arch villain(ess) and link the film's psycho-sexual and political themes?

13. During the homecoming sequence, Raymond Shaw's (Laurence Harvey) mother (Angela Lansbury) refers to him and to her husband (James Gregory) as "my two little boys," for whom she wants only the best. Given her secret life and her her imperious character, what does her comment reveal about her view of men? Why is Jocelyn Jordan (Leslie Parrish) also linked to the Queen?

14.The film's hero (Frank Sinatra) is named Bennett Marco. How does his name reflect the social assimilation of ethnic characters? Consider how he got his first name as well as the ethnic echoes of his family name.

15. In what ways does the dream that haunts Major Marco and a former corporal, Al Melvin (James Edwards), constitute the ideological and thematic center of the film? To be more specific, why do the communist brainwashers become transformed into a group of well-to-do, motherly American women attending a suburban garden club meeting. Why do they reflect the race of the dreamer?

16. What political figure of the 1950s is satirized in the figure of Senator Iseland? What irony is evident in his going to a costume party as President Lincoln? Why does a character claim that if the Senator "were a paid Soviet agent, he could not do more harm [to his country] than he is right now"?

17. Why, does the film indicate, is Shaw so unloveable? Why does he sneer at the Army, at TV, at Christmas, and at family life? Why, in short, does he hate the American Dream?

18. When Shaw saves Jocelyn Jordan, there is a reference to her father's fear of snakes as "very Freudian." In what ways might the entire film be seen as "very Freudian"?

19. Throughout the film, flags, eagles, and busts of national heroes are prominent in various settings, from the picture of General Douglas MacArthur in a Korean brothel to the bust of Lincoln in the room where Shaw's mother gives him his final assignment? What is their symbolic significance, and how to they seve as ironic comments on their settings?

20. How is the relationship between Marco and Rosie Cheyney (Janet Leigh) offered as a contrast to the other couples in the film? How do they serve to redeem the American Dream?

21. Describe a few of the reasons why The Manchurian Candidate might be regarded as the antithesis of The Best Years of Our Lives? In what ways does Frankenhiemer's film make explicit social issues that are only alluded to indirectly and symbolically in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers?