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The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
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Introduced by Harvard Law Professor and Judge Nancy Gertner (Ret.).
The Manchurian Candidate raises the same red flags today as it did in the early 1960s, when its story of political intrigue and assassination became all too relevant following the death of JFK, causing the film’s abrupt disappearance from screens.
Starring Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury, and Lawrence Harvey, it remains a nightmarish tale of high-level subterfuge, mental manipulation and the futility of one man’s rebellion against an ingrained social system. In one of his last roles as a genuine actor before he was swallowed by shallow fame, Sinatra shines as disturbed Korean war veteran Bennett Marco, who uncovers a plot to murder a presidential frontrunner. One of the first films to voice the growing belief that the American system of power and privilege was corrupt, it prefigures not just the Kennedy and King murders, but Vietnam, Watergate and the entire ’70s conspiracy boom. More importantly, it’s a sensational piece of genre filmmaking: pacy, compelling, witty and cynical, it depicts, in unflinching detail, the beginning of the end for post-war American optimism. – Time Out (London)
About The Speaker
Judge Nancy Gertner is a graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School where she was an editor on The Yale Law Journal. She received her M.A. in Political Science at Yale University. She has been an instructor at Yale Law School, teaching sentencing and comparative sentencing institutions, since 1998. She was appointed to the bench in 1994 by President Clinton. In 2008 she received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, only the second woman to receive it (Justice Ginsburg was the first). She became a Leadership Council Member of the International Center for Research on Women the same year. In 2010 she received the Morton A. Brody Distinguished Judicial Service Award. In 2011 she received the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Hennessey award for judicial excellence, and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brandeis University. In 2012 she received the Arabella Babb Mansfield award from the National Association of Women Lawyers, and the Leila J. Robinson Award of the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts. She has been selected to receive the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement from the American Bar Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession in August 2014. She has been profiled on a number of occasions in the Boston Globe, the ABA Journal, Boston Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. She has written and spoken widely on various legal issues and has appeared as a keynote speaker, panelist or lecturer concerning civil rights, civil liberties, employment, criminal justice and procedural issues, throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Her autobiography, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, was released on April 26, 2011. Her book, The Law of Juries, co-authored with attorney Judith Mizner, was published in 1997 and updated in 2010. She has published articles, and chapters on sentencing, discrimination, and forensic evidence, women’s rights, and the jury system. In September of 2011, Judge Gertner retired from the federal bench and became part of the faculty of the Harvard Law School teaching a number of subjects including criminal law, criminal procedure, forensic science and sentencing, as well as continuing to teach and write about women’s issues around the world.
