I toyed with the idea of watching the remake of this 1962 film that came out last year with Denzel Washington in the lead. Having had bad experiences with remakes, I decided to see the original film instead. Frank Sinatra not only owned the rights to the film but also played a main role. The plot line is simple: The Russians capture an American soldier in Korea, brain wash him, and send him back to America to carry out missions that would help the Soviet cause. Altough we can still detect the tensions of the cold war lurking in the background, the narrative is initiallly much too slow for the contemporary viewer. In the middle the film—almost surprisingly—gets back on track.  Freud was clearly at the peak of his influence when the script was put together: at the center of the personal and political drama is the relationship between mother and son who hate each other.   The Manchurian Candidate is not a film you have to see.