From Mr. Thompson,

Now that we've looked at the psychology of editing, it's time to look at the mechanics. This week, you'll learn about different types of cuts and transitions as well as something called the 180 Degree Rule, which is ESSENTIAL once you start making your own movies. It's a lot of vital information, so you've got two videos in this anticipation guide to give you lots of visual examples so you can come in to class ready to have a quick review before we start looking at our case study film.

With 'The Manchurian Candidate,' we continue with our string of thrillers whose fictional worlds hold up a surprisingly accurate mirror to our own. In fact, this film also addresses the frenzy of the McCarthy era but in a way that's much more satirical (and perhaps cynical) than 'High Noon.'

Like many of the films that I show you, this one is chosen in part because of the impact in had on me when I saw it as a teenager. When I think of great films that I watched with my dad, it's not the Marx Brothers or Bob Hope or Jimmy Stewart that I usually think of first; It's 'The Manchurian Candidate.' Anytime Sunday afternoon football ended, a television show called 'Murder, She Wrote" would come on. It starred the angelic Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, a grandmotherly mystery writer who politely solves murders Miss Marple-style. Of course, this was how I'd always known Angela Lansbury--this and as the voice of Mrs. Potts in Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast.' Yet every time the show came on, pop would turn off the TV and tell me how watching Angela Lansbury gave him the creeps because "she'll always be the mother from 'The Manchurian Candidate.'" It turns out that his first encounter with her had been as Mrs. Iselin, or "mother," a role she inhabited with such convincing villainy that over thirty years later, pop couldn't picture her as anyone else. "Mrs. Potts gives my dad the heebie jeebies? This I gotta see!"

What I discovered was a film that very well might be the greatest political thriller ever made. It seems like everyone in this film is performing at their peak. Frank Sinatra (yes, THAT Frank Sinatra), Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury were never better than they are in this film. It was nominated for two Academy Awards: one, for Ms. Lansbury, and another for editor Ferris Webster. Even for teenage Mr. Thompson, who knew probably as little about McCarthyism, JFK's assassination, or the Red Scare as you do, this was a haunting film. You don't need an understanding of U.S. history to get what's going on here. It's premise is utterly implausible, and yet the film is executed in such a way that the paranoia stays with you (and you'll never look at the Queen of Diamonds the same way again). It's one of those films that isn't scary, per se, but nevertheless makes me look over my shoulder anyway without knowing quite why I'm doing it; probably because politics aside, this film explores one deeply terrifying question: How do you know that you are you? And the editing--our focus this week--is one of the key reasons why that becomes such a difficult question to answer. At the very least, in the current era of hyper-sensitivity and "safe spaces," the film will hopefully make you think twice about what it means to be "triggered."

Enjoy John Frankenheimer's chilling 1962 masterwork, 'The Manchurian Candidate.'