The Manchurian Candidate

[Christian Appelt]

Yesterday I saw Jonathan Demme's MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. While I found that film entertaining and well-acted, I felt distracted by what I consider the worst cinematography on a major motion picture in many years.

 

United International Pictures further destroyed the film through sloppy dupe printing, thereby killing all sharpness & detail and giving the picture a shaky registration.

 

I'd like to have your opinion on MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE's cinematography. To me it looked like a sum of every vice in 1980s cinematography like grainy & muddy picture, painful shallow focus, bad strobing in almost every pan, abuse of long lenses and a general drabness in look. Even the fine acting of the leads could not save this one for me - and I'm not even comparing it to the original film that had, BTW, great b&w cinematography.

[Greg Gross]

Hello Christian,

Yes I agrree with you and for me the film was a let down. Maybe we

can explain this as to fact of the film being remake. I thought the camera

did a fine job,good camera angles,of course the actors were pros. If I re-

member right the color seemed flat,muddy. I did have a problem with the

story as I felt in a few scenes it did not move forward. The reason I did'nt

like this was that it occurred in crucial scenes where it should have shown

progress. I was so disappointed with "Collateral" such a damn fine story

should have been told on film as film was made for stories like that. I guess

its easy though to just say that thats the look I wanted! It was hard for me

to except Faye Dunaway as a villain, I like her in her previous roles,for me

it will always be "Chinatown" with Jack Nicholson-"she's my daughter,my

sister". She is a star. Well we could scrape up some money and do another

remake. We could hire David Mullen ASC to DP it and then it would look like

a film should look, true to script,story,mood. Best regards!

 

Greg Gross,Professional Photographer

Student Cinematographer