Raymond Shaw in a zombie like motion goes to convention hall where Presidential nominee is giving a speech. A few scenes before Raymond is instructed by his operator to carry out the assassination. The operator is his mother working for communists. Raymond is tamed by Queen of Diamonds. Whenever he sees the card, he goes into a trance state and acts as per instructions. As a result of this, Raymond can never remember what he did and who made him do that. This breaks the chain between action and instructor safeguarding the latter. In convention hall, Raymond hides in a small room at a height and aims from there. Manchurian Candidate was released in October 1962.
One year later, November 22nd 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a shooter hiding in a building on sixth floor. The assassin was Lee Harvey Oswald. What makes all this more interesting are some co-incidences in modus operandi and background of fictional Raymond Shaw and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Bothe Shaw and Oswald had a defense background. Shaw was platoon commander and Oswald was with Marine. Both had good credentials as sharpshooters. Both had Soviet links. Shaw was captured and hypnotized in Manchuria. His escape from captivity was heroic but a little unbelievable due to lack of details. Oswald, on the other hand, was a Soviet sympathizer. He even expressed desire to denounce his US citizenship and live in Soviet. Raymond, had he being arrested, could not have provide any logical explanation of his action. In front of law he would have been a sole conspirator. Oswald was named as sole conspirator by Warren Commission. Finally, Raymond committed suicide just after firing. Oswald was killed two days later by Jack Ruby, a man with no big reason to call the trouble home. Raymond and Oswald never faced trial.
Interesting fact is that the movie was rarely shown on TV post assassination. Though, its was later explained that this happened due to issues with distribution rights, many people believe that JFK assassination was the main reason. People associated with the movie deny this outright.
Written By: Sujoy Ghosh
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