The Manchurian Candidate
Movie Quote Quiz

Chunjin: I need job.
Raymond Shaw: Job?
Chunjin: Yes Sir, Mr. Shaw.
Raymond Shaw: But my dear fellow, we don't need interpreters here. We all speak the same language.

Marco: It's not that Raymond Shaw is hard to like. He's impossible to like.

Raymond Shaw: I've got a job on a newspaper. Research assistant to Mr Holborn Gaines.
Mrs. Iselin: Holborn Gaines? That Communist?
Raymond Shaw: He's not a Communist, Mother. As a matter of fact, he's a Republican.

Marco: Intelligence officer. Stupidity officer is more like it. Pentagon wants to open a Stupidity Division, they know who they can get to lead it.

Raymond Shaw: Twelve days of Christmas! One day of Christmas is loathsome enough.

Bennett Marco: You in the railroad business?
Eugenie Rose Chaney: Not anymore. However if you will permit me to point out, when you ask that question, you really should say: Are you in the railroad line?

Dr. Yen Lo: His brain has not only been washed, as they say... It has been dry cleaned.

Dr. Yen Lo: I'm sure you've all heard the old wives' tale that no hypnotized subject may be forced to do that which is repellent to his moral nature, whatever that may be. Nonsense of course.

Bennett Marco: Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

Mrs. Iselin: Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?

Yen Lo: Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?

Bennett Marco: I remember... I remember. I can see that Chinese cat standing there and smiling like Fu Manchu saying: The Queen of Diamonds is reminiscent in many ways of Raymond's dearly loved and hated mother... and is the second key to clear the mechanism for any other assignment.

Sen. John Yerkes Iselin: There's just one thing, babe. I'd be a lot happier if we could just settle on the number of Communists I know there are in the Defense Department. I mean, the way you keep changing the figures on me all the time, it makes me look like some kind of a nut, like... like an idiot.

Raymond Shaw: Senator Iselin is not my father. Repeat: he is not my father. If you learn nothing else on your visit to this country, memorize that fact.

Factual error: In the scene when the Senator and Raymond's mother are in the hotel room, the newspaper headline (upside down in the lower right) states that he will address the Senate that day. However, in the next scene when he proclaims there are 57 Communists (based on the Heinz ketchup), there is an uproar in the chamber and he yells "Point of order, Mr. Speaker." The Speaker (of the House) is not in the Senate, he is the head of the House of Representatives.

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Question: The whole plot of this movie makes no sense. What was the purpose of having all the soldiers "brainwashed' when they just used one to carry out what they wanted? Plus, why go to the trouble of doing all this when they could have just hired an assassin? Plus, how did they know, in 1952, that this man would be chosen to be the Vice-President?

wolfman

Answer: It's confusing. The entire platoon was brainwashed to be witnesses and verify the fabricated story that Raymond was a "war hero" who saved their lives. Raymond was unknowingly mentally programmed to become a sleeper agent to be used when needed by the Russians or Chinese. He was chosen because Raymond's monstrous mother, Eleanor Iselin, was married to a ruthless, ambitious "Joseph McCarthy-esque" U.S. Senator. She was propelling her husband into being their party's presidential candidate and contacted Communist agents to arrange for her husband's political rival to be assassinated. She was initially unaware that her son would be the chosen assassin. Raymond, being brainwashed, never realised he was a programmed assassin who would have no memory of executing his assignments. He apparently was recruited because of his step-father's political position. It is a rather incredulous plot, to say the least.

raywest

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