Top 5 - Political Conspiracies

Time for another edition of Tracie's Top 5, this time focusing on the political conspiracy thriller.  Most Americans of a certain age remember The Cold War, and the fear of communism and anything associated with it.  Most of the really good political thrillers play into this fear, or into the concept of nation-building and secret conspiracies.  

1. The Manchurian Candidate - My Top political conspiracy thriller of all time.  Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and the rest of their platoon are all captured during the Korean War, brainwashed and hypnotized by the North Koreans.  Upon their release, they are unaware of the role they all play in the attempted overthrow of the U.S. government by Communists, but are racing against time to break the hypnotic link and save the country and each other from disaster. It's creepy, it's violent, it's quiet and it's suspenseful. And Angela Lansbury gives us one of the all-time great screen villains.

2. Seven Days in May - Burt Lancaster is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who disagrees so strongly with a potential peace treaty with the Soviets, that he plans a coup.  Kirk Douglas is the Junior Officer who figures it out and takes it to the President, Fredric March.  It is then a race against time to gather enough evidence to reveal the plot and save the country from the coup. Terrific performances all around (Martin Balsam, Edmund O'Brien, and Ava Gardner included).  Can it be just a coincidence that my top 2 conspiracy movies were directed by John Frankenheimer? I think not.

3. Advise and Consent - This picture comes to us from Otto Preminger, another old hand at conspiracy movies.  In this one, President Franchot Tone has nominated Henry Fonda as Secretary of State, and this picture focuses on the machinations of members of the Senate to approve or deny the nomination.  Is he a communist or isn't he?  Don't we all have skeletons in our closet? And is worth keeping them hidden?

4. Missing - We can't consider conspiracy movies without giving a nod to Costa-Gavras, the European king of conspiracies.  Here, in a true story, we have Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, father and wife of an American who goes missing during the Chilean coup by Augusto Pinochet in 1973.  As they keep digging and searching further and further, they find disturbing answers as to the role the Chilean and U.S. governments played in his disappearance and eventual murder.  Jack Lemmon goes from a believer in his country, to a disbeliever and an ever-angrier father. Heartbreaking.

5. The Oscar-winning king of conspiracy movies.  Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman portray journalists Woodward and Bernstein, who gave us Deep Throat, and unraveled the Watergate Conspiracy, eventually resulting in the resignation of the President. A true whodunit, this movie gives us red herrings, attempts to silence witnesses,  and an eventual disappointing conclusion. Terrific oscar-winning performance by Jason Robards as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.

Hitchcock Retrospective

For those of you in the Salt Lake City area, don't forget to check out this month's Hitchcock Retrospective, taking place at The Broadway, and presented by the Salt Lake Film Society.  I went last weekend to see "The 39 Steps", and it was absolutely fantastic to see on the big screen, and with an enthusiastic crowd.